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BODIES    POLITIC    AND    THEIR 
GOVERNMENTS 


CAMBRIDGE   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

C.  F.  CLAY,  Manager 

ILoitJon:  FETTER  LANE,  E.C. 

Eiinbttrgfj:  ioo  PRINCES  STREET 


®tto  gotfe:  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

»om&a>>  anil  Calcutta:  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  Ltd. 

Toronto :  J.  M.  DENT  AND  SONS,  Ltd. 

ttokfio:  THE  MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 


All  rights  reserved 


BODIES    POLITIC 

AND 

THEIR  GOVERNMENTS 


BY 

BASIL    EDWARD    HAMMOND 

FELLOW   OF   TRINITY   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE  ;   AUTHOR  OF 

'OUTLINES  OF   COMPARATIVE  POLITICS*   AND  OF 

'POLITICAL    INSTITUTIONS    OF    THE 

ANCIENT    GREEKS* 


Cambridge : 

at  the   University  Press 
1915 


PREFACE 

In  the  following  chapters  the  author  lays  before  his 
readers  sketches  in  words  of  those  political  organisa- 
tions with  which  a  study  of  history  has  made  him 
acquainted.  The  sketches  are  many,  their  subjects 
diversified :  but  each  group  of  kindred  subjects  is 
figured  in  a  chapter  or  a  few  chapters  by  itself,  and 
when  that  is  done  a  tabular  view  of  the  subjects  in 
the  group  is  appended.  In  the  tabular  view  the 
subjects  appear  no  longer  in  separate  sketches,  but  in 
a  single  small  and  compact  panorama.  In  the  last 
chapter  the  separate  panoramas  are  joined  together 
into  one,  and  a  bird's  eye  view  of  political  organisa- 
tions of  all  sorts  is  exhibited. 

During  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  the  author 
has  been  led  by  his  studies  to  form  one  after  another 
several  different  general  views  of  political  organisations 
and  political  phenomena,  each  of  them,  he  believes,  a 
little  nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  one  that  preceded 
it.  Eleven  years  ago  one  of  these  views,  the  best  that 
he  could  then  make,  was  published  under  the  title, 
Outlines  of  Comparative  Politics.  Reviewers  of  the 
book  were  kind  in  noticing  such  merits  as  it  possessed  : 
but  they  did  its  author  a  greater  service  by  enabling 


vi  PREFACE 

him  to  see  some  of  its  blemishes.  He  was  so  conscious 
of  its  defects  and  so  hopeful  that  with  a  fresh  start  he 
might  do  better,  that,  though  an  edition  of  the  book 
was  quickly  sold,  he  decided  against  republishing  it, 
and  resolved  to  write  an  entirely  new  book. 

The  chief  fault  that  he  could  discern  in  his  earlier 
work  was  that  it  began  with  a  classification  of  political 
communities.  If  a  classification  is  old  and  has  been 
proved  to  be  useful  in  expressing  uniformities  and 
regularities,  it  may  stand  anywhere :  but  this  par- 
ticular classification  was  new  and  untried,  and  there- 
fore was  not  fit  to  be  placed  at  the  beginning  of  a  book, 
where  the  definitions  of  its  classes  must  be  arbitrary. 
In  the  book  now  published  the  author  first  describes 
individual  political  associations,  and,  till  the  members 
of  a  group  have  been  described,  does  not  define  the 
group.  The  plan  of  the  book  has  been  indicated  above, 
but  will  be  seen  more  clearly  by  any  one  who  will  read 
the  Introduction  and  the  last  chapter. 

One  matter  of  detail  may  be  noticed.  It  will 
probably  be  thought  that  there  must  be  some  lack 
of  proportion  in  a  sketch-book  of  political  organisa- 
tions, which  allots  more  than  half  its  pages  to  deline- 
ating small  communities  in  ancient  and  mediaeval 
cities,  and  less  than  half  to  figuring  large  communities 
in  modern  countries.  But  the  author  submits  to  his 
readers  the  opinion  that  the  disproportion,  if  there  is 
any,  could  not  easily  be  avoided.  The  communities 
in  the  cities  were  no  less  independent  and  separate 
than  those  in  countries,  and  have  a  like  claim  with 


PEEFACE  vii 

them  to  be  depicted.  They  were  many ;  the  com- 
munities in  countries  are  comparatively  few.  And 
more  than  that.  Independent  communities  in  cities 
are  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  no  man  now  living  has 
seen  one  of  them.  As  they  are  unfamiliar  objects, 
they  must  be  depicted  in  detail.  The  evidence  about 
ancient  city  states  is  extremely  fragmentary,  and 
almost  every  stroke  put  into  a  figure  of  one  of  them 
can  only  be  justified  after  nice  weighing  of  probabilities. 
With  communities  in  countries  the  case  is  different. 
Such  communities  are  before  our  eyes.  A  few  bold 
lines  confidently  drawn  from  abundant  evidence  suffice 
to  characterise  almost  any  one  of  them.  Minor  details 
are  not  wanted  in  representations  of  them,  because 
every  one  who  has  a  just  notion  of  their  main  outlines 
is  certain  to  supply  their  lesser  features  out  of  his  own 
imagination  or  knowledge  with  little  chance  of  error. 
The  book  was  finished  in  April,  1914,  when  Europe 
was  at  peace.  Since  then  many  nations  have  engaged 
in  unwonted  activities  ;  some  of  them  have  exhibited 
characters  that  could  not  previously  be  discerned  in 
them,  and  it  may  even  be  true  that  some  of  them  have 
changed  their  characters.  But,  whatever  changes  may 
have  taken  place,  we  cannot  yet  see  what  they  are, 
and  therefore  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  estimate 

them. 

B.  E.  H. 

Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
November  9,  1914. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION,         ......  1 

I.    EUROPEAN  TRIBES,                   ....  5 

II.    THE   FIRST   TOWNS   IN    EUROPE,         .                 .                 .  13 

III.  GREECE   BEFORE    650   B.C.,    ....  26 

IV.  SPARTA  TO   510  B.C.,              ....  33 
V.    SIMPLE  URBAN   PEOPLES  TO   480  B.C.,           .                .  40 

VI.   COMPOSITE  URBAN  PEOPLES  TO   510  B.C.,   .                .  48 

VII.   SPARTA,  ATHENS,   AND  PERSIA,   510  B.C.-480  B.C.,  61 
VIII.   COMMENTS    ON    THE   GREEK    URBAN    PEOPLES,    650 

B.C-480  B.C.,      .....  80 
IX.    HEGEMONIES      IN      GREECE      DURING      THE      WAR 

AGAINST  PERSIA,    477   B.C-454   B.C.,      .                .  86 
X.   ATHENS     IN      RECEIPT     OF     TRIBUTE,      454      B.C.- 

413  B.c,             .....  95 

XI.  THE  GREEK  CITIES,    412   B.C.-338   B.C.,        .                .  114 
XII.   COMMENTS    ON    THE    GREEK    CITIES    AND    GOVERN- 
MENTS, 477  B.c-338  B.C.,        .             .             .149 

XIII.  ITALIAN  PEOPLES  TO   264  B.C.,         .  .  .160 

XIV.  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  ROMANS   IN   ITALY,   264  B.C.- 

201   B.C.,                .....  218 
XV.   ROME,    ITALY,     AND     THE    PROVINCES,     201     B.C.- 

46  B.C.,               .....  238 

XVI.   COMPARISON    OF     ITALIAN     TOWNS     WITH     GREEK 

TOWNS,   ......  273 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVII.   THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE  CESARS,                         .                .  283 

XVIII.    BARBARIAN   CONQUERORS  OF  CIVILISED   PEOPLES,  314 

XIX.   JUNCTIONS  OF  TRIBES,  EFFECTED  BY  COMPULSION,  331 

XX.   JUNCTIONS  OF  FIEFS,   EFFECTED   BY  COMPULSION,  342 

XXI.   MEDLEVAL  CITIES:   (1)  INLAND  CITIES,      .                .  354 
XXII.   MEDIiEVAL  CITIES  :   (2)  MARITIME  CITIES  POSSESS- 
ING   IMPORTANT    TERRITORY    OUTSIDE     THEIR 

WALLS,                  .....  386 

XXIII.  UNIONS    OF    PEOPLES  :    STRONG    KINGLY    GOVERN- 

MENTS,                 .....  410 

XXIV.  UNITARY     NATIONS:      PARLIAMENTARY      GOVERN- 

MENTS,                 .....  442 

XXV.  VOLUNTARY  JUNCTIONS  OF  EQUAL  COMMUNITIES,  468 
XXVI.   VOLUNTARY     JUNCTIONS      OF     UNEQUAL     BODIES 

POLITIC,                .....  517 

XXVII.   PEDIGREES  OF  BODIES  POLITIC,        .  .  .543 

INDEX,           ......  555 


BODIES   POLITIC  AND  THEIR 
GOVERNMENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

It  is  observed  that  men  who  have  property  consisting  in 
cattle,  lands,  houses,  stores  of  produce,  or  any  other  property 
beyond  what  they  can  carry  about  on  their  communities 
persons,  are  always  arranged  in  groups  for  the  and  bodies 
protection  of  their  lives  and  property  and  the 
promotion  of  their  desires,  and  that  each  group  has 
some  kind  of  government,  either  made  by  the  group  itself 
or  imposed  on  it  by  some  stronger  group.  Men  formed 
into  a  group  for  mutual  protection  and  for  the  advantage  of 
all  usually  have  their  most  important  emotions  and  attributes 
in  common,  and  in  that  case  the  group  which  they  constitute 
is  called  a  community.  Every  group  of  men  who  share  the 
same  emotions  and  attributes  form  a  community,  whether 
they  have  a  government  of  their  own  making  or  a  govern- 
ment imposed  on  them  from  outside  by  compulsion.  Every 
group  of  men  or  group  of  groups  of  men  that  lives  under 
one  government  is  a  body  politic :  thus  a  body  politic 
may  either  be  one  community  or  be  composed  of  many 
communities. 

A  community  or  a  body  politic  retains  its  personal  identity 
complete  only  from  the  death  of  one  of  its  mem- 
bers to  the  death  of  the  next ;  and  as  soon  as  all   of  a  com. 
its  members  are  dead  its  existence  as  a  body   munityor 

.     .  ,,  .  .  .  body  politic. 

consisting  of  certain  definite  persons  is  entirely 

ended.     But  through  the  space  of  about  thirty  years,  for 

A 


2  PEOPLES  [int. 

which  a  generation  remains  in  its  prime  and  is  not  super- 
seded by  its  sons,  the  persons  gathered  in  a  group  for 
common  purposes  remain  for  the  most  part  the  same.  Thus 
the  lifetime  of  a  community  or  a  body  politic  is  about  thirty 
years. 

When  we  are  reading  or  speaking  about  times  for  which 
historical  details  are  scanty,  we  are  unable  to  distinguish 
any  one  community  or  any  one  body  politic  from 
that  which  went  before  it  or  from  that  which 
came  after  it :  then  we  are  compelled  to  think  and  speak 
of  successions  of  communities  or  of  successions  of  bodies 
politic  which  we  know  to  have  been  closely  connected  with 
one  another,  though  we  usually  do  not  know  exactly  how 
they  were  connected.  A  succession  of  communities  some- 
how connected  together  is  called  a  people.  There  is  no 
name  which  denotes  a  succession  of  connected  bodies  politic 
which  are  not  single  communities,  and  denotes  nothing 
more :  when  I  need  to  mention  such  a  succession  of  bodies 
politic  I  usually  call  it  a  group  of  peoples,  or  a  composite 
people. 

When  I  began  writing  the  pages  which  follow  I  had  only 
a  dim  notion  what  the  word  people  meant.  Now  that  I  have 
„,    MlA         finished  the  text  of  the  book  and  am  employed 

The  history  t  r     J 

of  peoples  is  on  the  Introduction,  I  see  that  when  I  am  com- 
httie  known,  p^j^  to  Speak  0f  a  people  I  am  often  speaking 
of  a  thing  whose  structure  and  progress  is  unknown  to 
me.  For  things  of  which  little  is  known  it  is  foolish 
and  misleading  to  use  a  precisely  defined  name.  Hence 
I  do  not  define  the  word  people  beyond  saying  that  I  use 
it  to  denote  a  succession  of  communities  which  in  some 
way  or  other  are  closely  connected  together. 

In  sharp  contrast  with  the  word  people  stands  the  word 
state.  It  was  employed  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  sixteenth 
century   by   the    Italian    Machiavelli    to    denote    a   body 


int.]  STATES  3 

politic  and  its  government,  and  in  one  instance  to  denote 
merely  a  government :  before  1580  it  had  been  heard  in  an 
English  Parliament,  and  was  to  be  found  in  the 

.  States. 

essays  of  Montaigne  bearing  the  same  sense  or 
senses.1  In  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the 
word  was  found  to  be  extremely  convenient  in  the  dealings 
of  bodies  politic  and  their  governments  with  one  another, 
and  therefore  it  received  a  careful  definition,  one  part  of 
which  it  will  be  well  for  me  to  explain. 

When  a  body  politic  has  dealings  with  other  bodies  politic 
it  acquires  rights  which  it  claims  to  enforce  against  them, 
and  incurs  obligations  in  return.     In  the  seven-   c.  . 

*  _  States  can 

teenth  century  bodies  politic  had  many  dealings  only  die  in 
with  one  another,  and  concluded  many  treaties,  e  way* 
and  in  particular  a  very  large  number  of  treaties  on  one 
famous  occasion  in  1648  when  congresses  of  ambassadors 
from  nearly  all  the  governments  of  central  and  western 
Europe  met  at  Munster  and  Osnabrtick  in  Westphalia  to 
sum  up  the  terms  under  which  the  Thirty  Years  War  was 
brought  to  an  end.  In  the  making  of  the  treaties  of  the 
seventeenth  century  it  became  an  accepted  doctrine  that, 
when  the  members  of  a  body  politic  die  out,  their  sons 
succeed  to  their  rights  and  obligations,  and  hand  them  on  to 
their  posterity ;  and  since  that  time  the  word  state  has  been 
adopted  as  a  technical  name  for  any  succession  of  bodies 
politic  which  transmit  rights  and  obligations  from  generation 
to  generation.  For  the  protection  of  rights  and  the  enforce- 
ment of  obligations  governments  have  accepted  the  legal 
principle  formulated  in  the  writings  of  international  lawyers 
that  a  state  can  never  die  or  lose  its  identity  unless  it  is 

1  Machiavelli,  II  Principe,  ch.  4,  ch.  5,  ch.  6,  the  first  clauses ;  (in 
ch.  5,  clause  3,  stato  di  pochi  is  a  translation  of  oligarchic/,,  and  therefore  stato 
means  only  a  government) ;  Goodier,  1571,  N.  Bacon,  1572,  Peter  Wentworth, 
1575,  in  Symonds  D'Ewes'  Reports,  pages  162,  193,  237  in  edition  of  1682, 
1093  ;  Montaigne,  Book  1,  Essay  54,  Book  3,  Essay  9. 


4  BODIES  POLITIC  [int. 

completely  merged  in  another  state   which  takes  over  its 

obligations  and  acquires  its  rights. 

l.  A  state,  then,  is  a  legal  conception.     Even  at  the  present 

time  when  states  as  denned  by  lawyers  are  before  our  eyes, 

it  is  as  hard  to  form  in  the  mind  a  complete 
States  not         m  m    t  . 

concrete  image  of  a  state  as  it  is  to  form  a  complete  image 
things.  0£  a  corporation.     For  states  bear  no  resemblance 

to  concrete  things :  it  is  impossible  for  all  the  men  who  go 
to  make  up  a  state  to  be  seen  together,  or  to  perform  an 
action  in  common.  The  members  of  the  English  state 
include  all  Englishmen  who  have  lived  at  any  rate  since  the 
time  of  Queen  Elizabeth  till  this  day :  it  is  manifest  they 
cannot  be  seen  together  nor  join  together  in  performing  an 
action. 

A  body  politic,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  a  perfectly  con- 
crete thing.     All  the  members  of  a  German  tribe,  or  of  a 
Greek  city,  or  of  the  modern  republics  of  Andorra 
tic  resemble     or  San  Martino  could,  or  can,  be  seen  at  a  glance : 
concrete         the  German  tribesmen  could  all  be  heard  at  once 

things. 

if  they  murmured  disapproval,  or  the  citizens  of 
Athens  if  they  shouted  or  groaned.  And  beyond  that  every 
body  politic,  whether  it  is  one  community  or  many  com- 
munities, whether  it  is  confined  within  the  narrow  limits  of 
an  islet  in  the  Pacific  Ocean  or  is  spread  like  the  empire  of 
the  Caesars  over  the  whole  civilised  world,  is  like  a  concrete 
thing  in  its  capacity  for  acting  as  if  it  were  a  single  person. 
I  have  chosen  bodies  politic  and  not  states  for  my  subject, 
because  I  desire  to  make  a  collection  of  sketches,  and  have 
found  on  trial  that  a  body  politic,  which  is  like  a  concrete 
thing,  furnishes  a  good  subject  for  sketching,  but  that  it 
is  extremely  difficult  and  perhaps  impossible  to  make  an 
intelligible  description  in  bold  outline  of  a  state,  which  is  a 
legal  and  almost  an  abstract  conception.  States  appear  in 
my  book  as  families  of  bodies  politic  with  long  pedigrees. 


CHAPTER   I 

EUROPEAN   TRIBES 

The  earliest  European  societies  of  men  to  which  we  can  by 
any  effort  of  inference  or  conjecture  reach  back  are  those 
that  once  lived  together  as  neighbours  and  spoke  primaeval 
in  those  primitive  tongues  whence  the  Aryan  societies- 
or  Indo-European  family  of  languages  is  derived.  From 
linguistic  evidence  we  know  that  some  at  least  of  the  men 
who  spoke  those  primitive  languages  were  already,  when 
they  lived  together,  keepers  of  sheep  and  cattle,  using  boats 
with  paddles,  and  carts  on  wheels  and  yokes  for  the  necks 
of  the  oxen,  and  dwelling  in  fixed  houses  with  doors ;  thus 
they  were  what  are  usually  called  settled  herdsmen.1  In  the 
great  gathering  of  the  primitive  Aryan-speaking  peoples  those 
who  could  be  ranked  as  settled  herdsmen  included  some 
part  at  least  of  those  who  spoke  the  languages  that  were  the 
parents  of  the  Celtic  tongues,  of  the  Latin,  of  the  Greek,  of 
the  German,  of  the  Hindu,  and  the  Persian :  whether  they 
included  any  who  spoke  those  ancient  tongues  whence  come 
the  Slavic  languages  is  not  so  clear.2 

A  good  part,  then,  of  the  primitive  Aryan-speaking  peoples 
lived  as  herdsmen  in  fixed  abodes.  From  the  observations 
of  modern  explorers  we  learn  that  all  settled  herdsmen 
live  in  communities,  and  have  some  kind  of  government. 

1  See  Schrader,  Sprachvergleichung  und  Urgtschichte,  translated  into 
English  by  Mr.  Jevons  under  the  title  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Aryan 
Peoples. 

2  Fick,  Indo-Europdisches  Worterbuch. 

6 


6  PASTORAL  AND  AGRICULTURAL  COMMUNITIES  [ch.  i. 

The  only  races  that  have  no  communities  and  no  govern- 
ments are  a  few  of  the  hunting  peoples  who  support 
Pastoral  themselves  entirely  by  gathering  wild  fruits  and 
communities.  roois>  an(j  by  killing  wild  animals :  they  cannot 
live  in  communities,  because  any  concourse  of  men  would 
frighten  away  their  game,  and  as  they  have  no  communities 
they  have  no  governments.1  There  cannot  be  any  doubt 
that  what  happens  in  modern  times  among  barbarous 
peoples  happened  also  among  similar  peoples  long  ago ;  and 
it  follows  that  those  of  the  primitive  Aryan-speaking  peoples 
that  had  advanced  to  be  settled  herdsmen  lived  in  com- 
munities and  under  governments.  The  earliest  kind,  then, 
of  political  communities  of  Aryan-speaking  men  to  which  we 
can  go  back  were  pastoral  communities.  We  can  learn 
what  the  pastoral  communities  of  the  Aryans  were  like, 
because  communities  that  were  undoubtedly  of  the  same 
general  character  existed  in  Germany  very  long  afterwards, 
and  were  described  by  Caesar.  Pastoral  communities  were 
also  to  be  found  in  the  northern  parts  of  the  Balkan 
peninsula  within  the  ages  known  to  us  from  literature,  but 
they  were  of  a  somewhat  different  type  from  those  of  the 
ancient  Aryans,  because  their  habitat  and  surroundings 
were  not  the  same. 

After  men  have  attained  to  be  settled  pastoral  peoples  the 
next  great  step  for  them  is  to  learn  such  arts  as  enable  them 
Agricultural  to  raise  food  from  the  soil.  Among  the  Aryan- 
tnbes.  speaking  peoples  those  who  in  early  prehistoric 

ages  made  this  step  forward  with  most  conspicuous  success 
were  some  of  the  Italians  and  of  the  Greeks.  They  made  it 
in  common,  and  became  skilful  tillers  of  the  soil  before  they 
entered  the  peninsulas  which  bear  their  names.2    While  they 

1  Herbert  Spencer,  Political  Institutions,  §  442,  confirmed  in  detail  by 
Spencer,  Descriptive  Sociology. 

-  The  evidence  for  this  statement  is  given  on  p.  11. 


en.  i.]  THE  GERMANS  7 

lived  together  in  continental  Europe  they  were  agricultural 
tribes,  or  societies  of  tillers  of  the  soil  living  in  the  open 
country  without  any  towns.  The  second  kind,  then,  of 
European  political  communities  are  agricultural  tribes :  and 
to  this  second  kind  belonged  those  communities  of  Italians 
and  Greeks  who  on  their  arrival  in  the  peninsulas  that  bear 
their  names  had  made  most  progress  in  learning  useful  arts. 
We  now  have  to  inquire  what  is  known  about  pastoral 
communities  and  agricultural  tribes.  We  begin  with 
pastoral  communities:  and  among  the  pastoral 
peoples  we  take  the  Germans  first,  because  their  communities 
communities  were  almost  certainly  very  like  the    and  a£"cul- 

J  *  tural  tribes. 

pastoral  communities  of  the  age  when  all  the 

Aryan-speaking  peoples  lived  as  neighbours. 

Caesar,  while  proconsul  in  Gaul  from  58  B.C.  till  49  B.C., 

came  into  contact  with  some  of  the  Germans,  and  gained  as 

much  information  as  he  could  about  them  all. 

The 

He  learned  that  they  were  hunters  and  herdsmen,  Germans, 
careless  about  agriculture,  but  eager  for  war.  j?,T*Sr" 
Their  communities  in  time  of  peace  were  cantons 
which  he  calls  regiones  or  pagi:  large  groups  of  cantons 
bore  a  common  name,  as  Tencteri  or  Usipetes,  but  the  group 
had  no  common  government  in  time  of  peace,  and  therefore 
the  cantons  were  independent,  each  of  them  only  controlled 
by  rulers  of  its  own,  whose  business  consisted  in  administer- 
ing justice,  and  in  deciding  what  part  of  the  land  in  the 
canton  should  be  allotted  in  each  year  to  the  several 
families  as  grazing  ground.  In  time  of  war  the  group  of 
cantons  that  bore  a  common  name  chose  commanders  to 
lead  the  warriors,  and  invested  them  with  power  of  life  and 
death:  thus  for  the  duration  of  the  war  there  came  into 
being  the  larger  unit  which  Csesar  called  a  civitas,  and  we 
may  call  a  tribe.  As  a  tribe  had  no  common  government 
in  time  of  peace  it  follows  that  it  had  no  king,  since  kings 


8  THE  GERMANS  [chap.  i. 

would  be  rulers  in  peace  and  war  alike:  the  kingly  title 
of  Ariovistus  was  exceptional,  and  is  given  him  by  Caesar 
because  it  had  been  recognised  by  the  Roman  Senate.1 
About  forty  years  after  Caesar's  time  western  Germany  was 
invaded  and  imperfectly  conquered  by  the  Romans  under 
Drusus  and  Tiberius,  stepsons  of  Augustus:  it  only  re- 
covered its  independence  in  a.d.  9  at  the  great  battle  of  the 
Teutoburgerwald.  Under  the  pressure  of  war  with  the 
Romans  many  groups  of  cantons  were  joined  permanently 
together  so  as  to  form  large  tribes  ruled  by  kings  in  time  of 
peace  no  less  than  in  war.  Among  the  tribes  thus  per- 
manently consolidated  before  a.d.  20  were  the  Cherusci, 
the  Chatti,  and  the  Marcomanni.2 

In  98  a.d.,  when  Tacitus  described  the  Germans,  their 
pursuits  and  economic  condition  were  still  almost  the  same 
as  in  Caesar's  time :  their  joys  were  fighting  and 
in  the  time  hunting,  their  wealth  was  their  beasts,  and  they 
oS  a^d'"*'  would  not  condescend  to  the  toil  of  agriculture.3 
But  politically  they  had  advanced :  every  tribe 
was  a  united  whole,  and  we  hear  no  more  of  partially 
independent  cantons.  In  nearly  all  the  tribes  supreme 
authority  belonged  to  a  concilium,  or  folkmoot,  a  general 
gathering  of  king,  chieftains,  and  ordinary  warriors:  the 
folkmoot  decided  for  peace  or  war,  and  elected  the  kings 
and  chieftains.  Tacitus  speaks  of  government  by  a  folkmoot 
as  prevailing  in  most  of  the  tribes;  but  he  mentions  as 
exceptional  some  tribes  who  were  under  strong  kingly  rule 
(eat  gentes  quee  regtiantur)*  He  afterwards  names  thirty- 
six  tribes  without  saying  how  they  were  governed,  whence 
I  infer  that  they  were  ruled  by  folkmoots.5    At  the  end  he 

1  Caesar,  Bell.  Gall.,  6.  22,  23  ;  for  Ariovistus,  Ibid.,  1.  31,  35. 

2  Tac.,  Ann.,  2.  88;  Smith,  Diet.  Geogr.,  'Chatti':  Velleius  Paterc,  2. 
118;  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  *  Maroboduus. ' 

1  Tac,  Germ.,  5.  25,  26.  *  Ibid.,  25.  8  Ibid.,  28-43. 


chap.  I.]  THE  GERMANS  9 

mentions  four,  all  living  around  the  Baltic  sea,  as  being 
under  the  unrestrained  rule  of  kings,  whence  it  is  obvious 
that  they  had  no  folkmoots,  or  their  folkmoots  had  little 
influence.1 

The  subsequent  fortunes  of  the  German  tribes  may  con- 
veniently be  noticed  here,  though  I  do  not  venture  to  assert 
that  they  did  not  soon  after  the  time  of  Tacitus 
learn  to  support  themselves  by  tilling  the  soil  as  German 
well  as  by  hunting  and  keeping  flocks  and  herds.  tnbes,  240- 
From  about  240  a.d.  large  groups  of  German 
tribes  joined  themselves  in  permanent  leagues  for  attack  or 
defence :  among  the  earliest  of  these  leagues  were  the 
Franks  near  the  Rhine,  mentioned  for  the  first  time  about 
240  a.d.,  and  the  Goths  who  near  the  same  date  forcibly 
occupied  the  Roman  province  of  Dacia.2  By  about  400  a.d. 
those  leagues  of  tribes  which  essayed  and  effected  great 
conquests  of  Roman  territory  had  coalesced  into  large  hordes 
in  which  the  original  component  tribes  were  not  dis- 
tinguishable, and  each  of  them  was  led  by  a  warrior  king 
whose  power  was  almost  absolute:  Alaric,  Chlodovech, 
Euric,  Theodoric,  and  Alboin  are  the  most  conspicuous  of 
their  rulers.  In  the  league  of  the  Saxons,  which  was  made 
for  defence  against  aggressive  German  neighbours,  the 
component  tribes  did  not  lose  their  separate  existence.  In 
the  time,  355-361  a.d.,  when  Julian  was  commanding  as 
Caesar  in  Gaul,  one  of  the  tribes  is  mentioned  by  name ;  and 
shortly  after  the  year  700  a.d.  each  tribe  had  a  separate 
ruler  to  manage  its  own  affairs,  but  for  the  control  of  the 
common  interests  of  all  these  rulers  were  a  federal  council.3 

In  the   Balkan  peninsula,   the  most  noteworthy  of  the 
peoples  that  continued  to  live  mainly  as  herdsmen  in  times 

1  Tac,  Germ.,  44. 

2  Franks,  Vopiscua,  Aurelianus,  6 ;  Goths,  Gibbon,  chapter  10. 
;)  Zosimus,  3.  6  ;  Bseda,  5.  10. 


10  TRIBAL  COMMUNITIES  [chap.  i. 

when  Greek  literature   was  abundant,  were  the  vEtolians, 

the   Akarnanians,  the  Phokians,  the   Molossians,   and   the 

Macedonians.    The  iEtolians  lived  in  a  region 

Pastoral  ,  » 

peoples  in       that  is  cut  up  by  a  multitude  of  mountain  ranges 
the  Balkan      jnto  verv  smau  natural  areas.     In  the  time  of 

peninsula.  J 

Thucydides  their  political  communities  were  no 
more  than  villages,  but  the  whole  of  them  had  the  common 
name  of  ^Etolians,  and  in  time  of  war  the  villages  acted  to- 
gether, as  the  collections  of  cantons  that  bore  the  common 
names  of  Tencteri  or  Usipetes  acted  together  in  Caesar's  time  : 
within  a  generation  or  two  after  the  time  of  Thucydides  the 
iEtolian  villages  had  formed  a  federation  ruled  by  a  federal 
council.1     The  Akarnanians  and  the  Phokians  went  through 
nearly  the  same  phases  as  the  ^tolians,  but  when  first  we 
hear  of  them  they  were  less  completely  barbarous,  and  had 
a  few  small  towns.2    The  Molossians  inhabited  one  of  the 
larger  natural  divisions  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and  thus 
grew  to   be  like  one  of  the   German   tribes  described  by 
Tacitus :  when  Themistokles  took  refuge  among  them  they 
had  a  king,  Admetus,  but  he  was  living  with  the  simplicity 
of  a  tribal  chieftain.3    The  Macedonians  alone,  among  the 
tribal  peoples  akin  to  the  Greeks,  grew  by  conquest  into  a 
large  union  of  tribes  like  those  formed  by  the  Franks  or  the 
Alamans  among  the  Germans.     Somewhere  about  700  b.c. 
the  tribe  to  which  the  name  Makedones  properly  belonged 
took  as  their  ruler  Perdikkas,  a  man  of  princely  lineage  in 
the  city  of  Argos :  Perdikkas  and  his  descendants  succeeded 
before  the  time  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  in  reducing  to 
some  kind  of  obedience  nine  more  tribes  and  in  bestowing  on 
all  of  them  the  common  name  of  Macedonian.4    When  the 

1  Thucydides,  3.  94  and  97  ;  Freeman,  History  of  Federal  Government  in 
Greece  and  Italy,  ch.  4,  ch.  6. 

2  Freeman,  Ibid. 

3  Thucydides,  1.  136. 

*  Herodotus,  8.  137-9 ;  Thucydides,  2.  80,  99,  and  4.  79,  83,  124. 


chap,  i.]  IN  SOUTHERN  EUROPE  11 

ten  Macedonian  tribes  undertook  the  conquest  of  Greece 
they  were  under  the  strong  kingly  rule  of  Philip,  the  father 
of  Alexander  the  Great. 

Of  the  agricultural  tribes  of  the  ancient  Italians  and 
Greeks  we  have  no  descriptions.  Before  the  beginnings  of 
literature  and  history  they  had  disappeared,  and 

ii  t     •         i  -r,  i  Agricultural 

towns  nad   taken   their  places.     But  we  know   tribes  of  the 
that  the  later  Italians  and  Greeks  possessed  a   kalians  and 

■  the  Greeks. 

common  system  of  agriculture,  used  the  same 
methods  of  preparing  grain  for  food  and  of  measuring  the 
ground,  wore  the  same  kind  of  clothing,  and  had  adopted 
the  same  plans  of  house-building  and  the  same  weapons  of 
offence.1  It  is  probable  that  they  acquired  the  greater  part 
of  this  common  stock  of  methods  and  appliances  while  they 
were  still  together,  and  therefore  before  they  moved  south- 
ward from  the  mainland  of  Europe  into  Italy  and  Greece, 
and  that  on  their  arrival  in  the  two  peninsulas  those  of 
them  who  had  made  the  most  progress  towards  civilisation 
were  very  well  equipped  agricultural  peoples.  In  the 
earliest  prehistoric  ages  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge 
the  most  powerful,  wealthy,  and  cultivated  of  their  peoples 
had  their  homes  in  Greece  about  the  isthmus  of  Corinth, 
or  in  Attica  or  Laconia,  and  in  Italy  on  the  southern  bank 
of  the  river  Tiber.  In  these  regions,  then,  lived  the  agri- 
cultural tribes  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  subsequent 
greatness  of  the  Greeks  and  the  Italians. 

The  distinctive  mark  of  a  tribe  is  that  it  has  no  towns, 
and  the  men  composing  it  live  in  the  open  country  em- 
ployed in  pastoral  or  agricultural  and  military  The  word 
pursuits.  An  end  is  put  to  the  simple  tribal  'trlbe-' 
manner  of  life  either  if  a  tribe  makes  conquests  of  territory 
abounding  in  wealth  and  so  is  led  to  engage  in  commerce, 
or  if  without  conquering  fresh  territory  it  gathers  a  great 

1  Mommsen,  Hist,  of  Rome,  1.  19-24. 


12  TRIBES  [chap.  i. 

part  of  its  population  within  the  walls  of  a  town  or  city. 
The  German  tribes  made  great  conquests  of  rich  territory, 
and  in  the  course  of  ages  became  the  founders  of  powerful 
nations;  the  tribes  of  Greece  and  Italy  did  not  conquer 
territory,  but  they  gathered  their  tribesmen  within  walls, 
and  their  descendants  were  the  inhabitants  and  the  masters 
of  important  cities,  some  of  them  military  and  the  rest 
maritime  and  commercial. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   FIRST  TOWNS   IN   EUROPE 

The  earliest  European  townsmen  are  known  to  us  only  from 
the  vestiges  that  they  have  left  in  their  fortresses,  their 
graves,  their  pottery,  their  weapons,  and  their  works  of  art. 
Mykense  was  the  place  where  Schliemann,  in  1876,  dis- 
covered the  best  of  their  treasures,  and  whence  our  first 
knowledge  of  their  civilisation  was  obtained,  and  accord- 
ingly their  civilisation  and  their  age  are  commonly  called 
Mykenaean ;  but  it  is  now  known  that  men  of  like  civilisa- 
tion were  living  in  the  same  age  in  Laconia,  in  Attica,  at 
Orchomenos  in  Bceotia,  in  the  southern  islands  of  the 
iEgean  Sea,  Paros,  Naxos,  Ios,  Amorgos,  Melos,  Thera, 
Therasia,  and  thence  southward  to  Crete  and  eastward  to 
Cyprus.1  It  is  mainly  from  a  comparison  and  classification 
of  specimens  of  pottery  found  in  these  places  that  archae- 
ologists have  concluded  that  all  of  them  enjoyed  a  coeval 
and  similar  civilisation.2 

The  buildings  of  Tiryns  and  Mykense  first  claim  our 
attention.  At  Tiryns  the  upper  and  stronger  part  of  the 
fortress  is  oblong,  about  a  hundred  and  seventy  Mykenae 
yards  in  length  and  a  hundred  in  breadth;  at  andTiryns. 
Mykense  the  citadel  is  a  triangle,  of  whose  sides  the  longest 
measures  about  three  hundred  and  fifty  yards  and  the 
others   two  hundred  and  fifty,  or  decidedly  more  if  their 

1  Frazer,  Pausanias,  vol.  3.  p.  145. 

2  For  the  Mykeniean  civilisation  generally,  see  Frazer,  Pausanias,  vol.  3. 
pp.  94-164,  and  pp.  217-30. 

13 


14  MYK^N^E  [chap.  ii. 

irregularities  are  followed.  At  Mykenae  there  was  a  walled 
town  lower  than  the  citadel,  fully  large  enough  to  accom- 
modate one  or  two  thousand  inhabitants;  at  Tiryns  the 
existing  remains  look  as  if  they  had  been  only  a  fortified 
residence  of  a  powerful  king.  At  Mykenae  outside  the 
citadel  are  eight  subterranean  beehive  tombs ;  three  are  in 
the  lower  town,  five  entirely  without  the  walls.  The  largest 
and  best  preserved  of  them,  measuring  fifty  feet  in  height 
and  fifty  in  diameter  at  the  level  of  the  floor,  is  popularly 
but  incorrectly  known  as  the  treasury  of  Atreus.1  The 
masonry  both  in  the  walls  of  the  citadels  and  in  the  bee- 
hive tombs  is  exceedingly  massive.  The  stones  of  the  wall 
adjoining  the  famous  Gate  of  the  Lions  at  Mykense  are  six 
or  eight  feet  long,  four  or  five  feet  high,  and  their  breadth 
is  greater  than  their  height.  In  the  treasury  of  Atreus  one 
block  of  the  lintel,  measuring  twenty-seven  feet  by  seven- 
teen by  three  or  four,  is  among  the  largest  stones  to  be 
found  in  any  building  in  Europe.  At  Mykenae  the  average 
thickness  of  the  wall  of  the  citadel  is  about  sixteen  feet ; 
at  Tiryns  the  thickness  varies  from  twenty  feet  to  fifty-four, 
and  in  some  places  the  portion  of  the  wall  still  standing  has 
a  height  of  fully  twenty  feet.2 

In  the  citadel  of  Mykenae  six  graves  were  found  by 
Schliemann  in  a  circular  enclosure  near  the  Gate  of  the 
Objects  Lions  with  their  contents  undisturbed.     Most  of 

found  there,  the  graves  are  hewn  vertically  downward  in  the 
solid  rock:  one  or  two  are  dug  in  earth  which  has  been 
added  to  give  the  fortress  a  convenient  contour.  Every 
grave  but  one  contained  several  skeletons  lying  in  layers, 
and  seemingly  interred  at  intervals  in  a  period  covering 
many  generations.     The  bones  had   not  been  charred  by 

1  Frazer,  Pausania*,  3.  125. 

2  For  details  about  the  buildings,  see  Schliemann,  Tiryxis,  and  Schliemann, 
Mykenae. 


chap,  ii.]  AND  TIEYNS  15 

fire:  the  treasures  buried  with  them  included  beautifully 
worked  coronals  in  gold,  golden  masks  on  the  faces  of  the 
dead,  silver  and  gold  cups  and  vessels,  and  a  fragment  of  a 
silver  vase  engraved  in  relief  with  a  scene  representing  an 
attack  on  a  fortified  town.  The  swords  and  other  weapons 
of  offence  found  in  the  graves  are  all  made  of  bronze : 
nothing  made  of  iron  was  found  in  the  graves  in  the 
citadel,  but  in  some  of  the  graves  in  the  lower  town  were 
found  a  few  iron  rings.1 

In  the  engraving  of  an  attack  on  a  walled  town  the 
defenders,  who  must  represent  Mykenaeans  or  men  like 
them,  carry  an  oblong  shield  large  enough  to  protect  all 
their  bodies  above  the  thighs,  but  do  not  appear  to  wear 
any  armour  fitted  to  the  body  or  limbs :  the  assailants  are 
naked  and  carry  only  slings,  but,  as  they  probably  represent 
barbarous  tribesmen,  they  tell  us  nothing  about  the 
Mykenaeans.  The  objects  found  in  the  graves  prove  that 
the  Mykenaeans  had  spears,  arrows,  and  swords  as  weapons 
of  offence ;  but  nothing  indicates  that  they  wore  cuirasses  or 
greaves  or  any  armour  fitted  to  the  body.2 

Among  the  objects  found  at  Mykense  were  some  that 
came  from  abroad.  From  the  Baltic  came  beads  of  amber ; 
from  Africa  an  ostrich  egg  adorned  with  clay  imported 
figures  of  fishes  glued  to  the  shell,  a  number  of  objects, 
small  ornaments  carved  in  ivory,  a  piece  of  porcelain  on 
which  was  written  about  1400  B.C.  the  name  of  Amenhotep 
the  Third,  King  of  Egypt,  and  a  scarab  of  the  same  period 
bearing  the  name  of  Ti,  the  queen  of  Amenhotep.  The 
presence  of  these  objects  proves  that  in  the  Mykenaean  age 
there  was  communication  between  Europe  and  Africa,  and 
leads  us  to  conjecture  that  intercourse  between  the  two 
continents  was  first  established  by  the  Phoenicians,  the  most 
active  mariners  of  that  age. 

1  Frazer,  Pauaanias,  3.  155.  8  Ibid.,  p.  116. 


16  ROUGH  DATES  FOR  THE  [chap.  ii. 

The  Phoenicians  could  come  by  sea  to  eastern  Greece 
without  ever  losing  sight  of  land :  first  they  sailed  along 
The  befrfn-  tne  soutnern  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  thenceforward 
ningsof  in  their  passage  to  Europe  there  was  never  a 
and  towns  point  from  which  none  of  the  islands  was  visible, 
in  Europe.  The  Phoenicians,  and  probably  also  traders  from 
Asia  Minor,  brought  to  Europe  products  of  industry  and 
knowledge  of  useful  arts  from  the  East,  where  civilisation 
of  the  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  types  had  been  established 
for  thousands  of  years.  Hence  by  a  process  extending 
probably  over  at  least  ten  centuries  the  Greeks  of  the 
eastern  mainland  and  of  the  islands  themselves  became 
proficient  in  useful  and  ornamental  arts,  and  accordingly 
they  became  comparatively  wealthy  and  built  fortresses  for 
the  protection  of  themselves  and  their  possessions. 

It  was  probably  between  1500  B.C.  and  1200  B.C.  that  the 

Mykenaean  civilisation  reached  that  stage  which  is  marked 

by  its  best  relics.     About  1500  B.C.  the  stream 

for  the  °f  passage  which  had  flowed  from  the  East  to 

Mykenaean      Europe   turned  and  ran   the    other   way  from 

civilisation. 

Europe  to  Egypt.  At  Gurob,  sixty  miles  south 
of  Cairo,  Professor  Flinders  Petrie  discovered  pottery  of  a 
very  peculiar  Mykenaean  type,  which  indicates  either  that 
imports  went  from  Greece  to  Egypt,  or  that  Greeks  of  the 
Mykenaean  age  were  settled  at  Gurob.  The  town  of  Gurob 
was  established  about  1500  B.C.,  and  by  about  1200  B.C.  it 
was  deserted:  in  its  ruins  were  found  sixty-two  objects 
inscribed  with  the  names  of  kings  between  those  dates,  and 
only  one  object  bearing  the  name  of  any  other  king.1  In 
the  reign  of  Seti  the  First,  about  midway  between  1500  B.C. 
and  1200  B.C.,  we  learn  from  Egyptian  contemporary  docu- 
ments that  one  of  the  best  contingents  in  the  Egyptian 

1  Frazer,  Pausanias,  3.   149.     Petrie,  Kahun,  Gurob,  and  Hawara,  1890. 
Plate  xxiv.  (Chronology,  at  the  right  hand). 


chap,  ii.]        myk£n^ean  civilisation  i? 

army  consisted  of  foreign  soldiers  belonging  to  a  people 
called  Shardana  whose  home  was  an  'island  in  the  great 
sea.'  From  Mykena?  we  know  that  the  military  accoutre- 
ment of  the  Mykenamns  consisted  of  spear,  sword,  bow,  and 
an  oblong  shield  without  body  armour :  the  equipment  of 
the  Shardana  in  Egypt  was  the  same  except  that  their 
shields  were  round.1  Hence  it  is  likely  that  the  Shardana 
came  from  some  island,  or  other  land  by  the  sea  in  which 
the  Mykemean  civilisation  prevailed,  and  that  one  of  their 
contingents  in  the  Egyptian  army  was  settled  at  Gurob. 

The  civilisation  of  the  Mykensean  age  was  spread  over 
Attica,  the  town  of  Orchomenos  in  Bceotia,  the  southern 
islands  of  the  iEgean  Sea,  and  the  eastern  half  Mig.ration 
of  the  Peloponnesus  including  Lacedsemonia :  of  the 
at  Mykense  and  Vaphio  near  Sparta  the  works  of 
art  indicate  that  it  reached  its  highest  level.2  From 
Mykense  and  from  every  other  place  in  the  Peloponnesus 
where  it  had  been  present  it  was  swept  away  when  the 
Dorians  came  down  as  conquerors  from  the  mountainous 
region  in  the  inland  part  of  northern  Greece.  Any  estimate 
of  the  date  of  the  migration  of  the  Dorians  must  depend 
on  consideration  of  what  happened  to  them  after  they  came 
to  the  Peloponnesus.  When  they  made  their  migration 
they  must,  from  the  nature  of  the  region  from  which  they 
came,  have  been  extremely  rude  and  barbarous  mountaineers. 
By  the  year  734  B.C.  the  Dorians  who  had  settled  at  Corinth 
had  become  so  proficient  in  maritime  enterprise  and  in 
trade  carried  by  sea  that  they  could  send  out  bands  of 
adventurers  who  founded  new  and  prosperous  settlements 
in  Kerkyra  and  at  Syracuse.  Between  their  first  coming  to 
the  Peloponnesus  and  their  founding  of  colonies  across  the 

1  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  vol.  2.  §  134. 

2  For  Vaphio  (t6  ^a^etov),  see  Tsountas,  in  'Y-ipyntpU  dpxaio\oyiK-^,   1889. 
pp.  136-72  and  Plates  7-10. 

B 


18  GEEEKS  IN  ASIA  MINOR  [chap.  ii. 

sea  a  long  period  must  be  allowed  in  order  to  give  them 
time  enough  to  change  themselves  from  sheer  barbarians  to 
seafaring  merchants.  Considering  how  slow  is  the  progress 
of  uncivilised  peoples,  three  or  four  centuries  is  not  too  long 
to  allow  for  the  process  of  change  in  their  pursuits  and 
condition;  and  hence  the  century  from  1100  B.C.  to  1000  B.C. 
is  the  latest  time  to  which  their  migration  and  conquests 
can  probably  be  assigned.1 

In  the  earliest  times  to  which  records  go  back  Greeks 
were  already  settled  on  the  western  coast  of  Asia  Minor. 
Greeks  in  In  the  northern  part  not  far  from  the  Troad 
Asia  Minor.  were  eieven  small  iEolic  towns  on  the  mainland, 
and  the  important  cities  of  Methymne  and  Mytilene  in  the 
neighbouring  island  of  Lesbos ; 2  further  south,  from  Smyrna 
to  Miletus,  came  twelve  Ionian  cities ; 3  beyond  them,  still 
further  southward,  lay  some  settlements  of  the  Dorians. 
The  JSolians  had  migrated  from  Thessaly  and  Bceotia : 4  as 
they  had  no  specific  memories  of  their  migration,  they  were 
probably  the  earliest  Greek  settlers  in  Asia.  Among  the 
Ionian  cities  was  Kolophon :  Mimnermus  of  Smyrna,  who 
lived  about  580  B.C.,  sang  in  one  of  his  elegies  that  the 
Kolophonians,  from  whom  he  was  himself  descended,  came 
from  Pylos,  the  city  of  Neleus,  in  the  south-west  of  the 
Peloponnesus.5  As  no  country  can  send  out  a  colony  across 
the  sea  unless  it  is  itself  strong  and  prosperous,  we  may 
infer  that  the  foundation  of  Kolophon  was  undertaken  by 
the  Pylians  before  they  were  threatened  by  the  Dorians  : 
thus  one  at  least  of  the  Ionian  cities  in  Asia  Minor  goes 
back  to  the  Mykensean  age.  The  Dorian  settlements  in 
Asia  Minor  obviously  belong  to  the  time  when  the  Dorians 
of  Europe  had  gained  access  to  the  sea,  and  therefore  they 

1  Dr.  Eduard  Meyer,  Dr.  Busolt,  and  Professor  Bury  agree  in  placing  the 
Dorian  migration  not  later  than  1100  B.C. 

2  Herodotus,  1.  149.  s  Ibid.,  1.  145.  *  Ibid.,  7.  176. 
5  Mimnermus  quoted  by  Strabo,  p.  634. 


chap,  il]        EARLY  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS  19 

were   not   founded   till   after   the   great   migration   of    the 
Dorians  into  the  Peloponnesus. 

During  the  age  in  which  the  Dorian  tribes  were  employed 
in  gradually  conquering  the  Peloponnesus  they  were  no 
doubt  led  by  strong  military  commanders :  after  Political 
the  conquests  were  made  these  military  com-  conditions 
manders  held  kingly  authority  in  their  Pelop-  Dorian 
onnesian  settlements  and  transmitted  it  to  ml&ratlon. 
their  descendants.  Also  during  the  age  of  the  Dorian  con- 
quest peoples  who  lived  near  the  track  of  the  conquerors, 
especially  the  people  of  Attica,  needed  military  kings  to 
protect  them  from  the  rude  mountaineers.  Hence  in  the 
age  of  the  Dorian  conquests  strong  kings  were  needed  in 
Greece,  and  we  may  believe  the  traditions  which  tell  us 
that  the  earliest  known  governments  in  Greece  were  of 
kingly  character.  Between  the  age  of  the  Dorian  conquests 
and  the  beginning  of  chronological  history,  which  we  may 
place  about  650  B.C.,  the  rule  of  kings  had  everywhere  been 
tempered  or  superseded  by  the  power  of  the  chief  men  in 
the  communities.  At  Sparta  government  was  conducted  by 
kings  and  a  council  and  five  magistrates:  in  Attica,  at 
Corinth,  and  at  Megara  castes  of  nobles  held  undisputed 
authority.1 

I  cannot  leave   the   prehistoric  age  of  Greece  without 
considering  the  question  whether  we  know  anything  about 
governments   during   the   Mykenoean  age.     Can   do  we 
we  assume  that  the  pictures  of  political  debates   ^.n.ow  a"y* 

r  r  t  thing-  about 

in  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  give  us  a  faithful   govern- 
representation  of  what  occurred  in  Mykense  and    Mykfinsean6 
in  other  Greek  communities  before  the  Dorian   age? 
conquest  ?      The    answer    to    the    question    must    depend 
on    the    time    to    which    the    completion    of    the    Iliad 

'Aristotle,   Ath.    Pol.,   3;   Herodotus,  5.  92;   Diodorus,   7.    fragm.    9; 
Aristotle,  Pol,  5.  5-9,  ed.  Bekker,  1837. 


20  ARGUMENTS  ABOUT  HOMER  [chap.  EL 

and  the  Odyssey  is  assigned.  If  the  poems  were  completed 
in  the  Mykensean  age  they  must  have  borrowed  their 
pictures  of  political  debates  from  the  practice  of  that  age ; 
if  they  were  not  completed  till  after  the  Dorian  conquest, 
we  cannot  be  sure  that  we  know  anything  about  govern- 
ments in  the  Mykensean  age. 

There  are,  on  the  one  hand,  facts  which  make  it  difficult 
to  believe  that  the  Homeric  poems  were  completed  in  the 
Date  of  the  Mykensean  age.  The  poems  describe  the  Greeks 
Iliad  and  the  ^  burning  the  dead  on  pyres  and  burying  only 
Heads  of  their  charred  bones,  as  wearing  greaves  and  cuir- 
arguments.  asses>  as  knowing  how  to  work  in  iron,  and  as 
using  iron  for  agricultural  implements.  The  objects  found 
at  Mykense  indicate  that  the  men  of  the  Mykensean  age 
buried  the  dead  without  burning  them,  had  no  body  armour, 
and  had  nothing  made  of  iron  except  a  very  small  number 
of  finger-rings.  Hence  it  would  seem  that  the  poems  belong 
to  a  later  age  than  the  relics  found  at  Mykense.  Moreover, 
somewhere  about  1100  B.C.  the  Mykensean  age  in  the  Pelopon- 
nesus came  to  an  end.  If  we  place  the  completion  of  the 
Homeric  poems  in  the  Mykensean  age,  we  shall  be  compelled 
to  believe  that  the  genius  of  the  Greeks  after  producing 
these  two  splendid  epics  lay  dormant  and  produced  no 
literature  whatever  till  the  age  of  Hesiod,  which  was  three  or 
four  centuries  later.  On  the  other  hand  stand  facts  which, 
till  Schliemann  made  his  discoveries  at  Mykense,  were  sup- 
posed to  prove  that  the  Iliad  at  least  was  completed  before 
the  Dorian  migration.  The  Iliad  does  not  mention  the 
Dorians  nor  the  Greek  settlements  in  Asia  Minor,  nor  does 
it  say  anything  about  mercantile  maritime  adventure,  which 
must  have  become  common  long  before  the  Dorians  of 
Corinth  could  found  their  colonies  of  Kerkyra  and  Syracuse. 

The  arguments  against  supposing  that  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey  were  finished  in  the  Mykensean  age  seem  strong. 


chap,  ii.]  ANALOGY  OF  THE  ARTHURIAN  EPIC  21 

The  value  of  the  opposing  arguments  from  omissions  or 
reticences  is  hard  to  estimate  offhand.  We  cannot  tell  by 
the  light  of  nature  how  epic  poets  would  act  in  selecting 
facts  for  the  adornment  of  their  narrative,  what  they  would 
take  and  what  they  would  omit.  But  we  may  get  indica- 
tions to  guide  us  from  observing  what  amount  of  regard 
was  paid  to  historic  verities  and  to  accuracy  in  describing 
the  habits  and  institutions  of  peoples  by  the  mediaeval 
story-tellers  who  composed  the  epic  romance  of  King 
Arthur. 

The  legend  of  King  Arthur  can  be  seen  almost  at  its 
beginning,  and  nearly  all  the  stages  of  its  growth  can  be 
traced :  for  many  of  the  statements  and  stories   _    .  _ 

J  <  <       The  Arthur 

from  which  it  was  derived  can  still  be  read  in  of  Nennius 
their  earliest  written  forms.  Gildas,  the  first  andGeoffry- 
British  writer  of  whose  works  anything  survives,  gives  us  in 
his  Be  Excidio  Britannia?  a  picture  of  desolation  unre- 
lieved by  achievements  of  any  hero.  He  does  indeed  tell  us 
that  in  the  year  of  his  own  birth,  forty-four  years  before  the 
time  at  which  he  was  writing,  the  Britons  signally  defeated 
the  Saxons  at  the  Mons  Badonicus;  but  he  does  not  mention 
the  name  of  any  British  warrior  who  shared  in  the  glory 
of  the  victory.  Among  all  the  marvellous  battles  in  which 
Arthur  was  afterwards  said  to  have  been  the  victor,  the 
fight  at  Mons  Badonicus  alone  actually  occurred.  The  year 
520  a.d.  is  the  earliest  to  which  the  battle  can  be  assigned, 
and  therefore  564  is  the  earliest  possible  date  for  the  writing 
of  the  De  Excidio  Britannice.  Since  no  mention  of  Arthur 
is  made  by  Gildas  we  may  infer  that  till  after  564  no  hero 
named  Arthur  was  conspicuous  in  British  story.  Nennius, 
a  Welshman  or  Briton,  who  wrote  soon  after  700  a.d.,1  makes 
Arthur  a  splendid  British  champion,  and  says  he  won  twelve 

1  The  probable  date  of  Nennius  is  discussed  in  the  introduction  to  the 
edition  of  his  work  in  Mon.  Germ.  Hist. 


22  GROWTH  OF  THE  [chap.  ii. 

battles :  one  was  the  battle  of  the  Mons  Badonicus,  the  rest 
were  imaginary.  Thus  the  years  564  and  about  720  are  the 
extreme  limits  between  which  a  legend  of  Arthur  came  into 
being.  In  the  first  half  of  the  twelfth  century  Geoffry  of 
Monmouth  tried  to  prove  that  the  Britons  had  never  been 
subject  to  the  Romans  nor  overpowered  by  the  English. 
He  makes  the  Arthur  of  Nennius  a  prime  figure  in  his  in- 
vented narrative,  but  the  necessary  inconsistencies  in  his 
story  are  so  glaring  that  his  work  has  none  of  the  charm  of 
a  good  romance.  Wace  of  Normandy  in  his  poem  Brut 
followed  Geoffry,  and,  having  no  controversial  object,  made 
a  story  which  can  be  read  with  interest. 

From  about  1175  continental  writers,  among  whom  none 
but  Chretien  de  Troyes,  the  author  of  Perceval,  is  known  to 
Th  „  .  me  by  name,  composed  stories  of  the  Quest  of 
Grail  and  the  Grail,  unconnected  with  the  Arthur  of 
Geoffry.  In  1200,  or  a  little  earlier,  a  Frenchman, 
Robert  de  Boron,  who  is  supposed  by  his  editor,  M.  Gaston 
Paris,  to  have  lived  somewhere  between  Normandy  and 
Flanders,  composed  his  poem  Merlin,  which  was  perhaps 
designed  to  form  part  of  a  trilogy  Joseph-Merlin-Perceval} 
He  borrowed  largely  from  Geoffry  or  from  Wace,  but  cared 
nothing  for  Geoffiry's  controversial  aims,  and  merely  tried  to 
make  a  vivid  and  edifying  story.  The  country  of  Merlin 
and  Arthur  is  to  him  '  Engleterre,'  he  knows  nothing  of 
Britons  as  distinct  from  Englishmen,  and  seems  to  have 
regarded  Arthur  as  a  member  of  the  family  from  which  his 
own  contemporary  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion  was  descended. 
But,  for  the  adornment  of  his  story,  he  makes  the  prede- 
cessors of  Arthur  and  Arthur  himself  employ  the  same 
officials  for  governing  their  subjects  as  were  employed  by 
the  French  kings  of  the  twelfth  century  for  the  government 

1  Merlin,  ed.   Gaston  Paris   (Firmin  Didot,   Paris,  1886),  especially  pp. 
ix-xxiii. 


chap,  ii.]  ARTHURIAN  EPIC  23 

of  their  demesne.  The  kings  whom  he  places  in  'Engle- 
terre '  as  predecessors  of  Arthur  had  a  conseil  depreudommes 
just  like  the  French  Curia :  Vertigiers  (Vortigern),  seneschal 
to  King  Moine,  and  Sir  Kei,  seneschal  to  King  Arthur,  are 
precise  copies  of  the  seneschaux  who  figure  so  largely  in 
the  history  of  King  Louis  le  Gros.1 

Romances  suggested  either  by  the  Merlin  of  Robert  de 
Boron  or  by  the  Perceval  of  Chretien  de  Troyes  form  the  staple 
of  the  Arthurian  legend  in  its  mature  form.   De 

-r,  ,  .    .    .  -    Later  con- 

.Boron  s  poem  was  put  into  a  prose  version  of  tritmtions  to 
which  copies  exist  both  in  manuscript  and  in   the  legend 

r  .  r  of  Arthur. 

print:  from  that  version  followed  L'Estoire  de 
Merlin,  La  Suite  de  Merlin,  and  Les  Propheties  de  Merlin.2 
In  the  vein  of  Chretien  de  Troyes  came  Le  Sainct  Graal, 
Lancelot,  Tristan.3  Robert  of  Gloucester,  writing  about 
1300,  and  Huchown,  or  Hugon,  or  Hew  of  Eglintoun,  about 
1370  or  1380,4  followed  in  the  main  Geoffry,  but  added  in- 
cidents of  great  interest :  Robert  of  Gloucester  says  that 
Arthur  held  a  Parliament  at  London,  and  Huchown  that 
he  not  only  held  a  Parliament  at  York  but  in  his  Parliament 
put  a  stay  on  all  vessels  in  English  ports,  because  he  would 
want  them  to  transport  his  troops  to  the  continent:  the 

1  For  the  Curia  see  my  twentieth  chapter :  for  the  French  seneschaux, 
Suger,  Vita  Ludovici  Grossi. 

2  The  prose  version  of  de  Boron's  Merlin  is  published  by  M.  Gaston  Paris 
in  pp.  1-146  of  his  Merlin.  The  text  of  L'Estoire  de  Merlin,  which  till 
recently  bore  the  very  inconvenient  name,  Le  Merlin  Ordinaire,  was 
edited  by  Dr.  Oskar  Sommer  for  the  Carnegie  Institute  at  Washington, 
and  was  published  in  1908  under  its  proper  title  as  vol.  ii  of  the  Vulgate 

Version  of  the  Arthurian  Romances,  by  the  Carnegie  Institute.  La  Suite  de 
Merlin  is  printed  in  Gaston  Paris,  Merlin,  beginning  at  p.  147  of  vol.  i.,  and 
extending  to  the  end  of  the  second  volume. 

3  For  all  the  sources  of  the  Arthurian  epic  see  vol.  iii.  of  the  excellent 
edition  of  Malory's  Morte  d' Arthur  by  Dr.  Oskar  Sommer. 

4  Robert  of  Gloucester,  Rolls  Series,  ed.  W.  Aldis  Wright.  On  Huchown 
see  Quellen  und  Forschungen  zur  Sprach-  und  Culturgeschichte  der  german- 
ischen  Volker,  No.  76,  The  Pistel  of  Swete  Susan,  ed.  by  Dr.  Ko'ster; 
Triibner,  Strassburg,  1895. 


24  MALORY'S  MORTE  D'ARTHUR  [chap.  11. 

statement  of  Huchown  is  manifestly  derived  from  a  know- 
ledge of  the  practice  adopted  frequently  by  Edward  the 
Third  of  England  in  his  war  against  France.  Lastly,  after  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Sir  Thomas  Malory  took 
Robert  de  Boron,  L'Estoire  de  Merlin,  Le  Sainct  Graal, 
Lancelot,  Tristan,  and  Huchown's  Morte  d' Arthur,  and  from 
them  'reduced'  the  epic  romance  of  the  Morte  d' Arthur. 
His  work  was  finished  in  1469,  and  in  1477  it  was  published 
by  Caxton,  who  wrote  for  it  a  most  interesting  preface. 

Malory's  romance,  which  gives  the  legend  of  Arthur  in 
its  final  form,  and  therefore  corresponds  to  the  Iliad  and 
,  Odyssey  as  we  possess  them,  does  not  mention 

Morte  that  Arthur  was  a  Briton,  nor  that  the  English 

had  conquered  the  Britons,  nor  that  some  genera- 
tions before  Malory's  time  they  had  been  exporters  of  wool, 
but  in  his  own  time  spun  and  wove  most  of  their  wool  at 
home,  nor  that  their  army  in  his  time  consisted  no  longer 
of  knights  on  horseback  but  of  bowmen  on  foot.  From  his 
omissions  we  see  that  he  took  from  his  predecessors  what  he 
wanted  for  the  adornment  of  his  stories  and  did  not  trouble 
himself  about  historical  facts.  After  observing  what  facts 
this  mediaeval  romance  passed  over  in  silence,  I  do  not 
think  it  possible  to  argue  that  because  the  authors  of  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  did  not  mention  any  events  or  con- 
ditions, those  events  or  conditions  were  unknown  to  them, 
and  think  that  the  strong  reasons  already  given  for  believing 
that  the  poems  were  written  long  after  the  Dorian  migration 
may  be  accepted  as  conclusive  without  involving  us  in  any 
improbable  suppositions. 

Even  if  we  admit  no  more  than  that  we  cannot  be  certain 
that  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  were  completed  before  the 
migration  of  the  Dorians,  we  are  precluded  from  asserting 
that  they  tell  us  anything  about  the  political  institutions 
of  the  Mykenaean  age :  they  may  have  borrowed  pictures  of 


chap,  ii.]  CONCLUSIONS  25 

political  life  from  anywhere  and  transferred  thern  into  the 
age  of  the  heroes,  just  as  the  authors  of  the  Arthurian 
romance  borrowed  a  seneschal  from  France  in   „ 

Conclusions 

the  twelfth  century,  and  a  parliament  and  privy  from  the 
council l  from  England  nearer  to  Malory's  time,  '""S"11161115- 
and  transferred  them  all  into  the  imaginary  realm  of  the 
Britons  and  King  Arthur.  The  scenes  of  political  or  military 
assemblies  and  of  military  councils  in  camp  which  occur  in 
the  Odyssey  and  the  Iliad  are  such  as  could  have  been 
copied  or  adapted  from  the  actual  life  of  the  Greeks  in 
Sparta,  Argos,  Corinth,  or  Athens,  in  all  of  which  places 
military  kings  were  ruling  in  the  age  of  the  Dorian  con- 
quest, and  afterwards  kings  and  nobles  shared  the  work  of 
government  between  them.  Hence  it  seems  clear  that  the 
Homeric  poems  do  not  tell  us  anything  about  the  political 
life  of  the  Greeks  in  prehistoric  ages  beyond  what  we  know 
independently  of  them  from  other  sources. 

1  Malory  himself  is,  I  believe,  the  first  who  gives  Arthur  a  privy  council. 


CHAPTER  III 

GREECE   BEFORE   650   B.C. 

The  Balkan  peninsula  joins  the  main  block  of  the  European 
continent  in  a  line  reaching  from  Fiume  near  Trieste  to 
Physical  Odessa  on  the  Black  Sea.  It  is  cut  into  three 
geography      chief  compartments  by  two  lines  of  mountains 

of  the  .  r         .     ,  m,  . 

Balkan  running  across  it  from  east  to  west.    1  he  northern 

peninsula.  jjne  j^  ^G  Balkan  range  with  its  prolongation  to 
the  west,  and  extends  from  Varna  to  Montenegro.  The 
southern  line  starts  with  Mount  (Eta  near  the  north- 
western end  of  Eubcea,  and  runs  east  to  the  Gulf  of  Arta 
on  the  Adriatic  Sea. 

The  three  compartments  of  the  peninsula  are  of  very 
unequal  importance  in  the  history  of  Greece.  With  the 
northern  compartment,  consisting  of  lands  that  lie  to  the 
north  of  the  Balkan  range  and  drain  into  the  Danube,  the 
ancient  Greeks  had  no  dealings.  In  the  middle  compart- 
ment the  only  inland  regions  that  had  much  importance 
for  the  Greeks  were  Thessaly  and  Macedonia ;  but  on  all  the 
coasts  of  this  second  compartment  except  those  of  Thessaly 
and  Epeirus  they  made  settlements.  The  third  compart- 
ment of  the  peninsula  lying  south  of  Mount  (Eta  was  the 
home  of  the  most  important  Hellenic  peoples :  and  I  shall 
designate  it  by  the  name  Hellas,  though  the  word  was 
occasionally  used  in  a  somewhat  wider  signification. 

Hellas,  which,  thus  defined,  covers  an  area  no  larger 
than  a  third  of  England  or  half  of  Scotland  or  Ireland, 
is   effectually  isolated  from    the   rest    of  Europe   by   the 

2C 


chap,  in.]  PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY  OF  GREECE  27 

range  of  Mount  (Eta,  and  is  cut  up  by  a  network  of 
mountains  into  smaller  natural  divisions  than  any  other 
region  that  has  been  a  home  of  civilised  peoples.  . 

Its  mountain  ranges  are  as  near  together  as  geography 
those  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Swiss  Alps,  and  °  e  as' 
it  has  no  long  valley  like  those  of  the  Rhone,  the  Rhine, 
and  the  Inn,  which  provide  Switzerland  with  its  largest 
natural  divisions:  no  point  in  Hellas  is  more  than  sixty 
or  seventy  miles  distant  from  the  sea,  and  therefore  its 
valleys  are  short. 

The  largest  areas  in  Hellas  that  can  be  confidently  counted 
as  natural  divisions  are  Lacedaimonia  and  Attica :  each  of 
them  is  equal  to  a  rectangle  measuring  about 
forty  miles  by  twenty,  and  is  of  nearly  the  same  divisions  of 
size  as  Oxfordshire  or  Cambridgeshire.  The  valley  e  s' 
of  the  Kopais,  the  home  of  the  Phokians  and  the  Boeotians, 
is  about  twice  as  large  as  Lacedsemonia  or  Attica,  but  is 
naturally  subdivided :  mountains  mark  a  division  between 
Phokis  and  Bceotia,  and  within  Bceotia  the  swamps  of  the 
shallow  lake  Kopais  and  the  rocky  character  of  the  northern 
shore  of  the  lake  interrupt  communication  and  cut  up 
the  land  into  many  distinguishable  natural  subdivisions. 
Messenia  and  Elis  are  almost  as  large  as  Lacedsemonia  or 
Attica,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  Elis  is  one  natural  area 
or  divided  into  three.  Argolis,  the  last  of  the  larger  natural 
divisions  of  Hellas,  is  rectangular;  from  east  to  west  it 
measures  twenty-five  miles,  and  from  north  to  south  fifteen. 

Of  the  lesser  natural  areas  in  Hellas  the  most  considerable 
measure  about  ten  miles  by  ten  or  twenty  by  five.  Among 
them   are   those  in  which  stood  Corinth,   Epi-   ^L   , 

1        The  lesser 

daurus,  and  Megara,  the  valley  that  contained   divisions  of 
Sikyon  and  Phlius,  and  twelve  dales  in  Achaia,   Hellas- 
on  the  south  side  of  the  Corinthian  gulf,  which  are  com- 
pletely kept  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  Peloponnesus  by  the 


28  PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY  OF  GREECE  [chap.  ttt. 

great  mountain  chain  of  Erymanthus  and  Kyllene,  and  are 
in  most  cases  fenced  off  from  one  another  by  mountain 
barriers.  The  natural  comminution  of  the  ground  into 
very  small  areas  is  most  extreme  in  Arcadia,  yEtolia,  and 
Akarnania,  where  the  whole  surface  is  a  network  of  rocky 
mountains  with  very  few  pieces  of  fiat  ground  and  without 
even  a  straight  river  valley. 

The  mountain  barriers  between  the  natural  divisions  of 
Hellas  are  with  few  exceptions  strong  for  defence  against 
The  such  efforts  to  penetrate  them  as  could  be  made 

strength         by  peoples  in  an  early  stage  of  civilisation.     The 

of  natural  '  *?  ,  ,  ■,    •  , 

frontiers  in  exceptions  that  can  be  noted  in  a  good  map 
Hellas.  are  these : x  the  mountains  between  Bceotia  and 

Phokis  are  not  formidable,  and  Megara  is  only  divided 
from  Attica  by  rocky  hills  which  can  be  traversed  without 
much  difficulty. 

The  islands  and  coasts  of  the  iEgean  Sea  are  scarcely  less 
important  in  Greek  history  than  Hellas  itself.  Eubcea,  a 
.  ,    J      -     hundred  miles  long,  is  by  far  the  largest  of  the 

Islands  and       t  .  . 

coasts  of  the  islands,  but  is  nearly  all  filled  with  mountains, 
jEgean  ea.  aQ(j  ^Q  largest  clear  space  in  it  is  one  measuring 
about  twenty  miles  by  fifteen  in  which  stood  Chalkis  and 
Eretria.  Lesbos,  about  as  large  as  Attica,  is  divided  into  at 
least  five  natural  areas.  The  other  islands  are  smaller,  and 
are  almost  filled  up  with  mountains,  and  the  few  clear 
spaces  in  them  usually  measure  only  three  or  four  miles 
across.  The  western  shore  of  Asia  Minor  is  cut  up  into 
small  valleys  and  amphitheatres,  and  in  that  respect  it  is 
like  most  of  the  shores  of  Hellas ;  but  it  is  not  permanently 
ensured  from  being  attacked  from  the  land.  It  is  pierced 
by  the  channels  of  the  large  rivers  Mseander,  Kayster,  and 

1  A  map  published  in  Philipson,  Peloponnesus,  gives  contours.  For 
regions  outside  the  Peloponnesus  the  official  map  of  Greece,  published  in 
Vienna  in  1885,  is  the  best. 


chap,  in.]  MARITIME  CITIES  29 

Hermus,  whose  sources  lie  in  the  high  table-land  of  Phrygia, 
two  or  three  hundred  miles  inland :  hence  any  strong  power 
settled  about  the  sources  of  the  rivers  would  be  able  to 
descend  by  the  valleys  and  attack  the  dwellers  by  the  sea- 
shore. 

During  a  period  of  about  four  centuries  after  the  migra- 
tion of  the  Dorians  the  youthful  Greek  peoples  were  forming 
their  habits  and  characters.     By  about  650  B.C., 
when    the   four   centuries   end    and    European   peopies 
chronology    begins,    they   can    be    arranged    in   about 
three  groups :  first,  peoples  mainly  employed  in 
maritime  and  commercial  pursuits ;  second,  peoples  entirely 
ignorant  of  seafaring ;  and  third,  peoples  who  divided  their 
attention  between  the  land  and  the  sea. 

The  peoples   who   were   mainly   employed   in   maritime 
and  commercial  pursuits  were  much  more  numerous  than 
all    the    rest.     Long   before    the   beginning   of 
chronological  history  peoples  of  this  sort   had   and 
been  established  in  the   islands  of  the  ^Egean   commercial 

cities. 
Sea,  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  in  about  half  a 

dozen  of  the  smaller  natural  divisions  of  Hellas  near  the 
isthmus  of  Corinth,  along  the  northern  shores  of  the  vEgean 
Sea,  and  all  round  the  Sea  of  Marmora.  A  most  character- 
istic feature  of  these  peoples  is  that  their  territories  were 
of  very  small  extent  and  contained  no  place  of  any 
importance  except  a  single  city,  and,  in  case  the  city  itself 
stood  inland,  one  or  more  adjoining  seaports  for  the 
accommodation  of  its  shipping.  As  each  territory  con- 
tained nothing  of  importance  beyond  the  city  and  its  seaport 
or  seaports,  which  were  practically  part  of  the  city,  the 
purely  maritime  and  commercial  Greek  peoples  may  be 
called  simple  urban  peoples,  and  the  community  inhabiting 
one  of  them  at  any  given  time  may  be  called  a  simple  urban 
community. 


30  TERRESTRIAL  GREEK  PEOPLES       [chap.  hi. 

The  Greek  peoples  ignorant  of  seafaring  were,  if  we 
neglect  the  barbarous  iEtolians  and  their  like,  the  inhabitants 
_       ..  ,       of  Lacedsemonia,  of  Messenia,  and  of  Elis ;  with 

Terrestrial 

Greek  them  may  be  probably  counted  also  the  Boeotians, 

peopes.  wj^    bought    faey   hg^j   decent  access    to    the 

Corinthian  gulf,  do  not  appear  to  have  made  any  use  of 
it.  In  Bceotia  there  were  about  fifty  towns : x  eight  or 
ten  of  them  were  strong  fortresses.  Originally  these  strong- 
holds were  probably  independent:  when  first  we  know 
anything  about  them  they  had  formed  a  confederation 
under  the  presidency  of  Thebes.  About  Elis  little  is  known 
and  nothing  shall  be  said.  Messenia  by  about  750  B.C.  was 
already  all  ruled  by  a  king  residing  at  Stenyklarus.  In 
Lacedsemonia  the  Dorians  soon  after  they  had  conquered 
the  country  founded  twelve  or  fourteen  independent  villages. 
Sparta  was  the  strongest,  and  its  inhabitants  reduced  all  the 
other  villages  to  obedience,  and  seemingly  to  contentment 
under  their  rule,  though  they  never  gave  them  a  particle  of 
political  rights.  Between  750  and  650  the  Spartans,  with 
the  help  of  their  subject  villagers  whom  they  called  Periceki, 
or  Dwellers  Around,  accomplished  an  enterprise  such  as 
no  other  Greek  people  ever  attempted.  They  invaded  and 
conquered  Messenia,  though  it  was  outside  their  own 
natural  frontiers ;  but  they  found  it  impossible  to  keep  its 
inhabitants  in  subjection  without  reducing  them  to  a 
condition  of  serfdom,  and  to  the  name  of  Helots.  In  650 
B.C.  Sparta  was  a  strong  military  village,  and  its  inhabitants 
were  the  most  formidable  fighters  in  Hellas,  but  were 
compelled  to  spend  most  of  their  energy  in  constant 
efforts  to  prevent  their  Messenian  serfs  from  rising  in  armed 
rebellion. 

The  peoples  that  divided  their  attention  between  the  land 
and  the  sea  were  those  that  lived  in  Attica  and  Argolis. 

1  Smith,  Dirt.  o/Geogr.,  article  'Bceotia,'  vol.  1.  p.  415. 


chap,  iil]  ATTICA  AND  ARGOLIS  31 

There  was,  as  we  have  noticed,  a  people  in  Attica  in  the 
Mykensean  age  of  like  civilisation  with  the  men  of  Mykense  : 
from  this  primaeval  Attic  people  the  Athenians 
of  historical  times  were  directly  descended.1     In   partly 
regard  to  the  political  condition  of  Attica  the   ^&~£tiy 
first  thing  we  know  is,  that  in  some  extremely   maritime, 
remote    age    the     soil    of    the    country    was 
parcelled  out  among  about  a  dozen  independent  towns  or 
villages,  of  which  Athens  was  the  strongest.     In  the  course 
of  time  Athens  conquered  the  other  towns  and  undertook 
to  govern  them  ; 2  but  we  may  conclude  that  the  government 
of  them  was  difficult,  because  so  late  as  the  times  of  Solon 
and  Peisistratus  sharp  opposition  arose  between  the  country 
of  Attica  and  the  capital.     There  is  not  any  direct  evidence 
to  show  that  the  people  of  Attica  had  anything  to  do  with 
maritime  enterprise  in  the  period  before  650  B.C.  with  which 
alone  I  am  concerned  in  the  present  chapter;  but  within 
one  or  two  generations  after  that  date  they  had  an  important 
organisation  for  providing  their  government  with  ships  of 
war,  and   this   organisation  was  not   likely  to   arise  till  a 
century  or  two  after  they  first  took  to  maritime  pursuits.3 

In  Argolis  stood  the  two  ancient  strongholds  of  Mykense 
and  Tiryns.  When  a  Dorian  people  conquered  the  country 
they  took  Argos   as   their  capital,  but  allowed 

.  m,     .  (2)  Argolis. 

Mykenoe  and  Tiryns  to  subsist.  Their  conquests 
were  not  limited  to  Argolis,  but  included  the  districts  of 
Kynuria  and  Thyreatis,  which  are  separated  from  Argolis 
by  the  swamp  Lerne.  The  work  of  keeping  Mykense  and 
Kynuria  and  Thyreatis  in  obedience  must  have  given  them 
employment  in  their  own  dominions;  but  somewhere  about 

1  For  proof  of  this  statement  derived  from  the  pottery  found  at  Menidi  in 
Attica,  see  Frazer,  Pausanias,  3.  p.  138. 

2  Thucydides,  2.  15. 

:t  See  especially  Herodotus,  5.  71  ;  Aristotle,  Ath.  Pol.,  S. 


32  THE  GREEK  PEOPLES,  650  B.C.        [chap.  m. 

750  B.C.  their  King  Pheidon  also  intervened  forcibly  in  the 
affairs  of  several  neighbouring  cities,  and  even  marched  an 
army  far  away  to  the  west  to  take  part  with  the  people  of 
Pisa,  and  to  help  them  to  usurp  from  the  people  of  Elis  the 
honour  of  presiding  in  an  Olympic  festival.1  But  though 
the  Argives  were  so  active  on  the  land,  they  also  employed 
themselves  in  external  commerce;  for  Pheidon  introduced 
into  Hellas  the  first  system  of  measures,  and  his  system  was 
afterwards  taken  into  general  use  by  many  Greek  peoples. 

The  peoples  established  in  Attica  and  in  Argolis  were 
alike  in  one  characteristic.  In  each  of  them  the  authority 
„.  ..   ..     ,    to  rule  belonged  to  a  single  city ;  but  outside  the 

Similarity  of  °  . 

Attica  and       city  were  places  of  some  importance  whose  in- 
Tg0  s'  habitants  could  on  occasion  act  for  themselves 

and  might  even  be  recalcitrant  against  the  government  in 
the  chief  city.  As  the  people  both  in  Attica  and  in  Argolis 
was  compounded  of  the  community  in  the  central  city  and 
the  communities  in  other  towns  or  places  which  retained 
some  individuality,  each  people  could  be  called  a  composite 
urban  people,  and  the  community  inhabiting  it  at  any  given 
time  could  be  called  a  composite  urban  community. 

About  the  year  650  B.C.,  which  for  Europe  marks  the 
beginning   of  chronological  history,  the  Greek  peoples  of 

which  we  have  some  knowledge  were  (1)  the 
of  Greek  Spartans,  (2)  a  large  number  of  simple  urban 
peoples,  peoples,  and  (3)  two  composite  urban  peoples. 

In  the  next  four  chapters  it  will  be  my  business 
to  sketch  the  characters  and  institutions  of  these  peoples 
from  the  earliest  times  till  480  B.C.,  when  Europe  was 
invaded  by  Xerxes,  King  of  Persia. 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  article  'Pheidon.' 


CHAPTER  IV 

SPARTA   TO   510   B.C. 

In  historical  times  the  organs  of  the  Spartan  government 
were  two  kings,  a  senate  of  elders,  a  general  assembly  of  the 
Spartiatoe,  and  five  Ephors  elected  annually  by  the  assembly. 
One  of*  the  kings  reigned  by  right  of  direct  descent  from 
Agis,  the  other  by  the  like  right  derived  from  Eurypon. 
The  senate,  called  Gerousia,  consisted  of  exactly  twenty- 
eight  elders  and  two  kings,  and  had  therefore  thirty 
members.  The  original  distribution  of  powers  among  the 
four  organs  of  the  government  is  unknown :  for  the  only 
statements  with  regard  to  it  that  have  been  preserved  rest 
on  a  document  which  is  probably  a  forgery.1 

In  the  existence  at  Sparta  of  general  assemblies  of  the 
warriors  and  of  the  annually  elected  Ephors  there  is 
nothing  surprising :  these  institutions  have  their  Dual 
counterparts  at  Athens  and  in  Rome.  But  the  kin£shiP 
presence  of  two  kings  reigning  together  by  right  of 
descent  from  the  founders  of  their  respective  families  is 
a  phenomenon  peculiar  to  Sparta,  for  which  there  is  no 
parallel  elsewhere,  and  the  fixity  of  the  number  of  the 
members  of  the  Gerousia  is  unusual  in  a  half-civilised 
people.  The  duplication  of  the  kingly  dignity  at  Sparta 
was  puzzling  to  the  ancient  Greeks,  and  they  invented  an 
explanation  of  it  which  probably  has  never  seemed  satis- 

1  See  two  masterly  articles  by  Dr.  Eduard  Meyer  in  Kheiniaches  Museum, 
18S6  and  1887. 

C 


34  PREHISTORIC  SPARTA  |chap.  iv. 

factory  to  anybody.1  Within  the  last  hfty  years  a  far  more 
plausible  theory  has  been  suggested.2  In  Sparta,  when  it 
was  visited  in  the  age  of  the  Antonines  by  the  traveller 
Pausanias,  there  was  a  quarter  named  after  the  family  of 
Agis  and  containing  their  burial-place :  another  quarter 
was  the  burial-ground  of  the  sons  of  Eurypon.3  Hence  it 
has  been  conjectured  that  there  was  originally  an  inde- 
pendent village  or  canton  ruled  by  the  sons  of  Agis  and 
another  ruled  by  the  sons  of  Eurypon,  and  that  these  two 
villages  or  cantons  were  joined  together  to  form  Sparta. 
It  must  be  added  that  if  this  conjecture  is  sound  we  are 
to  imagine  that  the  two  villages  or  cantons  joined  together 
as  equals  by  consent  of  both,  and  not  as  the  result  of  a 
conquest  effected  by  one  of  them;  for  if  there  had  been 
a  conquest,  the  king  of  the  victorious  village  or  canton 
would  have  reigned  as  sole  king.  If  we  adopt  the  theory 
that  the  two  villages  or  cantons  were  joined  together  as 
equals  by  their  common  consent,  everything  strange  in 
the  Spartan  government  is  explained.  It  would  be  natural 
that  two  communities  joining  together  as  equals  should 
stipulate  that  the  heads  of  their  ruling  families  should 
always  share  the  royal  dignity  as  equal  colleagues,  and 
that  each  of  the  ,two  communities  should  have  a  fixed 
number  of  its  citizens  as  members  of  the  Gerousia.4 

In  regard  to  the  office  of  the  Ephors  there  is  a  conflict  of 

authorities.     Herodotus,  our  earliest  informant,  believed  that 

the  board  of  Ephors  was  one  of  the  institutions  of 

The  Ephors.  *  . 

a  mythical  lawgiver,  Lykurgus,  or,  in  other  words, 
that  it  was  of  immemorial  antiquity.     Aristotle,   writing 

1  Herodotus,  6.  51,  52. 

8  By  C.  Wachsmuth  in  Jahrbuch  fur  class.  Philol.,  1868.  See  Gilbert, 
Griechische  Staatsalterthumer,  vol.  1,  p.  4,  n.  2. 

»  Pausanias,  3.  14.  2,  and  3.  12.  8. 

4  See  Gilbert,  Oriech.  Staatsalt.,  vol.  1,  p.  4,  who,  however,  is  inclined 
to  think  that  three  communities,  joined  together  to  form  Sparta. 


chap,  iv.]  CONQUEST  OF  MESSENIA  35 

about  a  century  after  Herodotus,  says  that  it  was  not 
instituted  till  about  700  B.C.  in  the  reign  of  Theopompus.1 
But  between  the  times  of  Herodotus  and  of  Aristotle  there 
arose  in  Sparta  in  the  year  399  B.C.  a  sharp  conflict  of 
parties  in  consequence  of  a  suggestion  that  the  kingly 
dignity  ought  no  longer  to  depend  merely  on  birth,  but 
should  be  made  elective.  The  opponents  of  the  suggested 
alteration  desired  to  make  out  that  the  kingly  office  was 
far  more  venerable  than  any  other  organ  of  the  government, 
and  it  is  probable  that  they  may  have  invented  the  theory 
that  the  Ephors  were  not  instituted  till  the  time  of 
Theopompus,  and  may  have  fabricated  documents  with 
a  semblance  of  great  antiquity  in  support  of  their  con- 
tention.2 As  the  story  told  by  Aristotle  is  likely  to  have 
originated  in  a  falsification  of  history,  I  have  no  hesitation 
in  trusting  the  testimony  of  Herodotus,  nor  in  believing 
that  the  office  of  the  Ephors  was  established  long  before 
the  times  of  any  of  the  kings  of  Sparta  who  are  in  any 
degree  historical  personages. 

The  external  progress  of  Sparta  until  650  B.C.  has  already 
been  briefly  delineated  in  the  last  chapter.  It  was  effected 
in  two  chief  steps  :  the  conquest  of  Lacedsemonia,  conquest  of 
and  the  conquest  of  Messenia.  The  conquest  Messenia- 
of  Lacedsemonia  was  probably  completed  not  later  than 
800  B.C.  The  Spartans  after  they  had  conquered  the 
other  villages  in  Lacedajmonia  no  doubt  treated  them  well, 
and  obtained  their  willing  support  in  their  next  great 
enterprise,  the  conquest  of  Messenia.  That  enterprise  was 
begun  somewhere  between  750  B.C.  and  700  B.C.,  and  by 
about  700  B.C.  in  the  reign  of  Theopompus  it  was  partially 
effected ;  but,  as  Messenia  is  nearly  as  large  as  Lacedasmonia 
and  is  separated  from  it  by  a  natural  barrier  of  mountains, 

1  TT>rodotus,  1.  65  ;  Arist.,  Pol.,  5.  11.  2,  3;  Bekker,  Oxf.,  1837. 
-  .Sec  Dr.  Kduard  Meyer  in  Rheinisches  Museum,  1886  and  1887. 


36  SPARTAN  DISCIPLINE  [chap.  it. 

the  Messenians,  who  were  almost  as  good  fighters  as  the 
Lacedaemonians,  could  not  be  kept  in  subjection  by  any 
gentle  methods  ■  and  somewhere  about  650  B.C.  the  Spartans 
took  the  resolution  of  turning  them  into  serfs,  to  whom  they 
gave  the  name  of  Helots,  or  captives  taken  in  war.  A  part 
of  the  Messenians,  comprising  no  doubt  the  most  energetic 
men  in  their  nation,  were  carried  away  into  Lacedgemonia, 
and  their  services  were  assigned  by  the  Spartan  government 
to  the  use  of  individual  Spartans :  the  masters  settled  the 
Helots  thus  assigned  to  them  on  little  plots  of  their  own 
ground,  whence  they  compelled  them  to  render  a  fixed 
proportion  of  the  produce.  The  remainder  of  the  Messenians 
were  left  behind  as  agricultural  serfs  in  their  own  country, 
where  they  needed  to  be  constantly  watched  by  patrols  of 
Spartan  warriors. 

After  the  Spartans  had  enslaved  the  Messenians  they 
were  compelled  to  adapt  their  lives  and  habits  to  the 
spartan  tas^  °^  keeping  them  enslaved.  Thucydides. 
discipline,  writing  of  the  year  424  B.C.,  says  that  till  that 
time  all  the  institutions  of  the  Lacedaemonians  were 
framed  specially  with  a  view  to  the  Helots,  to  guard  against 
their  insurrections.1  From  Xenophon's  description  of  the 
Lacedaemonian  commonwealth  we  can  see  that  from  the 
time  of  the  enslavement  of  the  Messenians  the  Spartans 
took  so  completely  the  character  of  a  garrison  of  slave- 
masters  that  they  lost  most  of  the  qualities,  and  disregarded 
most  of  the  aims,  which  are  present  almost  universally 
in  political  communities.  In  order  to  qualify  themselves 
for  their  great  task  of  keeping  down  their  Messenian  serfs 
they  submitted  themselves  to  an  exceedingly  rigorous 
system  of  military  discipline,  trained  themselves  to  endure 
hardships  and  poverty  without  intermission,  and  abjured 
wealth,  luxury,  commerce,  and  even  the  art  of  agriculture, 

1  Thucydides,  4.  80. 


chap,  iv.l  WARS  OF  THE  SPARTANS  37 

which  they  left   to   the  Perioeki.1     The   chief  business  of 

the   Spartan    warriors    consisted    in    acting  in    bodies  of 

armed  policemen  to   prevent    the   Helots   from    rising  in 

rebellion. 

Though  the  Spartans  from  about  650  B.C.  were  constantly 

busy  at  home  in  watching  the  Helots,  they  yet  were  able 

about  a  century  later  to  undertake  fresh  enter- 

.  ,  .     .  .  .j.  Wars  of  the 

prises    outside    their    own    territories.      irom   Spartans, 
about  560  B.C.  they  engaged  in  a  war  with  the   s6°  B-^-" 

547  B«C» 

neighbouring  city  of  Tegea,  and  after  a  contest 
which  lasted  many  years  they  compelled  it  to  submit  and 
to  be  taken  under  their  protection.2  About  547,  marching 
over  the  mountains  that  separated  them  from  the  territory 
of  the  Argives,  they  conquered  and  annexed  the  districts  of 
Kynuria  and  Thyreatis : 3  this  time  they  were  strong  enough 
to  keep  the  conquered  inhabitants  in  subjection  without 
enslaving  them,  and  henceforth  they  were  indisputably  the 
strongest  power  in  the  Peloponnesus.  It  is  almost  certain 
from  an  expression  used  by  Herodotus  that  from  547  onwards 
they  enjoyed  such  an  acknowledged  superiority  over  some  of 
their  neighbours,  especially  the  people  of  Elis  and  some  of  the 
Arcadians,  that  they  would  have  been  able  to  require  them 
to  send  soldiers  to  aid  in  any  war  in  which  they  themselves 
might  chance  to  be  engaged ; 4  but  from  547  to  510  they  had 
no  war  to  wage,  and  therefore  needed  no  soldiers  from  their 
neighbours. 

During  the  whole  period  from  650  to  510  the  Spartans 
were  mainly  employed  on  the  difficult  task  of  keeping  down 
the  enslaved  Messenians:  it  was  only  for  a  short  period 
ending   in    547    that    they   found   leisure   or  strength    to 

'   Xenophon,  Hep.  Lacedwm.,  7  and  11.  2  Herodotus,  1.  66-68. 

3  Ibid.,  1.  82.     See  above,  ch.  3,  p.  31. 

4  H>id.,  1.  68.  ij8r)  5i  ff(pi  Kali]  iroWr)  tt;j  HeXoirovvfjffov  ?jv  KareffTpati^ivq. 
In  508  B.C.  a  Spartan  king  demanded  and  obtained  soldiers  for  a  foreign 
war  from  a  large  number  of  Peloponnesian  states.     Herodotus,  5.  74. 


38  INSIGNIFICANCE  OF  [chap.  iv. 

engage  in  foreign  wars.  In  the  performance  of  the  work 
of  repressing  the  Helots  their  real  master  was  their 
indifference  rigid  system  of  discipline :  they  had  little  need 
of  the  Spar-     0f  human'directors,  and  consequently  it  mattered 

tans  to  the  .  "  m  . 

.  form  of  their  little  to  them  which  of  the  organs  of  their 
government.  g0vernment  was  in  the  ascendant.  They  did 
their  work  as  policemen  like  machines,  by  routine  and  by 
strict  adherence  to  military  discipline,  and  did  not  much 
care  who  were  their  political  rulers,  provided  that  the 
ruling  body  was  small,  so  as  to  be  able  to  give  prompt 
and  secret  orders  in  case  of  insubordination  among  the 
Helots.  Hence  it  seems  to  have  been  almost  a  matter 
of  chance  which  of  the  organs  of  their  government  came  out 
at  the  top. 

The  organs  of  the  Spartan  government  were  the  two 
kings,  the  Ephors,  the  Senate  of  Elders  (Gerousia),  and 
s    „  the  assembly  of  all  the  Spartiatag.     Of  the  as- 

importance  sembly  and  the  Gerousia  between  650  and  510 
organs  in  we  ^ear  notnmg>  an^  it  is  natural  that  we 
the  Spartan  should  hear  nothing.  The  work  of  the  as- 
sembly consisted  only  in  electing  the  Ephors 
and  occasionally  in  filling  up  a  vacancy  in  the  Gerousia : 
and  the  Spartiatse  cared  very  little  about  elections.  The 
Gerousia  would  have  been  a  useful  body  for  making  and 
maintaining  foreign  alliances;  but  the  Spartans,  at  any 
rate  till  about  550,  had  no  allies,  and  there  was  therefore 
no  important  work  for  the  Gerousia  to  do.  The  remaining 
organs  of  the  government  were  the  two  kings  and  the  Ephors  : 
between  them  the  small  amount  of  governmental  work  that 
the  Spartans  needed  was  divided.  The  two  kings  when  at 
home  had  no  prerogative  rights  beyond  certain  trivial 
religious  precedencies  and  perquisites,  but  when  abroad 
they  were  commanders  of  the  army :  the  Ephors  might  at 
any  time  be  called  upon  to  decide  what  measures  should 


chap,  iv.]  SPARTAN  GOVERNMENT  39 

be  taken  to  repress  the  Helots.  On  the  whole,  it  seems 
likely  that  the  Ephors  were  the  least  insignificant  organ 
of  the  Spartan  government ;  and  this  view  is  confirmed  by 
the  story  which  tells  us  that  King  Anaxandrides,  whose  wife 
was  childless,  was  compelled  by  the  Ephors  contrary  to  bis 
own  wish  to  commit  bigamy.1 

1  Herodotus,  5.  39-41. 


CHAPTER  V 

SIMPLE   URBAN   PEOPLES  TO   480  B.C. 

It  is  probable  that  the  earliest  maritime  and  commercial 
towns  of  the  Greeks  were  those  on  the  islands  of  the  -cEgean 
Sea,  which  had  been  frequented  by  Asiatic  traders  in  the 
Mykensean  age.  Next  after  them  would  come  the  cities  of 
Asia  Minor,  and  then  the  Dorian  cities  in  the  Peloponnesus, 
and  the  cities  established  on  the  northern  shores  of  the 
iEgean  Sea.  Between  800  B.C.  and  700  B.C.  the  most 
important  of  the  maritime  towns  were,  if  we  may  judge  by 
the  colonies  that  they  founded,  Chalkis  in  Eubcea,  Miletus  in 
Asia  Minor,  Corinth  and  Megara  on  the  neck  that  joins  the 
Peloponnesus  to  the  European  mainland.  By  about  650  B.C. 
many  scores  of  maritime  towns  had  been  established  in  and 
around  the  iEgean  Sea  and  on  the  shores  of  Greece.  All  of 
them  except  twelve  towns  in  Achaia  were  inhabited  by 
separate  and  independent  peoples,  and  all  but  one  of  these 
independent  maritime  peoples  conformed  exactly  to  the  type 
of  what  I  have  called  simple  urban  peoples :  that  is  to  say, 
each  of  them  had  very  small  territory  and  had  no  places  in 
the  territory  except  a  principal  town  and  sometimes  one  or 
two  seaports  appended  to  it.  The  one  city  which  diverged 
perceptibly  from  the  regular  type  was  Megara,  which  in 
addition  to  its  territory  on  the  isthmus  possessed  also  the 
important  island  of  Salamis,  separated  from  its  own  shores 
by  a  strait  half  a  mile  broad. 

Nearly  all  the  maritime  cities  had  the  size  of  their  territories 

40 


chap,  v.]       MARITIME  CITIES  INEXPANSIVE  41 

fixed  once  and  for  always   by  natural  frontiers  so   strong 
that  political  boundaries  could  not  deviate  from  them.     But 
even  in    the  few  cases    in   which   a  maritime   Themari- 
city  did    not  occupy   the  whole  of  a   natural  jm  not  care 
division  of    the   land,    and    therefore    was   not  for  territory, 
precluded     by     natural     obstacles     from     getting     fresh 
territory,    it     usually    remained     content    with     what    it 
had.     Sikyon  occupied  only  the  lower  part  of  the  valley 
in   which   it  stood,   but  it  left  the   upper    part   to  Phlius 
without   dispute.     The   territories  of  Corinth  and  Sikyon 
in   their  lower   parts   adjoining   the  Corinthian  gulf  were 
not    separated    by  any    defensible    natural    frontier,   and 
yet    the    two    cities    did   not   contend   about  the   size  of 
their  shares    of  the  plain  by   the  sea,   though   it  was  so 
rich   that  that   'what  lies   between   Corinth  and   Sikyon' 
became  a  proverbial  expression  for  great  wealth.     The  only 
instance  known   to   me  in   which  a  maritime  city  got  an 
acquisition   of  territory  occurred  in  Eubcea.     Chalkis  and 
Eretria  were  about  twelve  miles  distant  from  one  another, 
and  as  they  were  not  separated  by  any  natural  frontier,  the 
rich  Lelantine  plain  near  Chalkis  was  a  piece  of  debateable 
land  between  them :  about  600  B.C.  the  two  cities  were  at 
war  with  one  another,  Chalkis  was  victorious,  and  took  the 
Lelantine  plain  definitely  into  its  possession.1    From   the 
extreme  rarity  of  disputes  about  boundaries  between  the  mari- 
time cities  we  can  see  that  they  did  not  care  about  territory : 
no  doubt  their  inhabitants  had  their  minds  so  set  on  com- 
merce that  they  did  not  trouble  themselves  about  parcels  of 
land.     The   maritime   cities  were  from  the  beginning  and 
remained  to  the  end  territorially  inexpansive. 

As  the  maritime  cities  refrained  generally  from  disputes 
about  territory,  they  were  almost  entirely  exempt  from  wars 

1  Strabo,  p.  44S  end  =  10.  1,  12;  Smith,  Diet.  Geogr.,  articles  'Chalkis' 
and  '  Eretria.' 


42  GOVERNMENTS  OF  THE  [chap.  v. 

waged  on  the  land.  If  we  take  note  of  the  number  of  the 
maritime  cities  and  of  the  number  of  the  wars  by  land  in 
The  man-  which  any  of  them  were  engaged  between  650  B.C. 
time  cities  and  510  B.C.,  the  disproportion  between  the  two 
wage  wars  numbers  will  be  apparent.  From  650  B.C.  to 
by  land.  559  BC>  there  were  about  a  hundred  independent 

maritime  cities ;  after  550  B.C.,  when  Croesus,  King  of 
Lydia,  subjugated  the  cities  of  Asia  Minor,  there  were 
about  three  score.  The  number  of  recorded  wars  waged 
on  the  land  by  any  of  the  maritime  cities  between  650  B.C. 
and  510  B.C.  is  three.  One  war  was  that  between  Chalkis 
and  Eretria,  which  has  been  already  mentioned ;  the  second 
was  that  in  which  Megara  fought  against  Athens  in  the  time 
of  Solon  in  defence  of  Salamis ;  and  the  third  was  that  in 
which  the  Megarians  tried  to  defend  their  seaport  of  Nissea 
against  the  Athenians  under  the  command  of  Peisistratus.1 

Since  the  maritime  cities  were  generally  well  protected  by 
natural  frontiers,  and  were  exempt  from  the  fear  of  war  by 
Govern-  land,  they  had  no  need  to  defend  their  territories, 
maritime  *  -^n  political  communities  as  a  general  rule  the  sole 
cities.  cause  that  first  produces  good  and  just  govern- 

ments acting  for  the  good  of  all  is  the  fear  of  invasion, 
which  compels  all  classes  to  look  to  the  defence  of  all, 
and  obliges  the  rulers  to  be  considerate  of  all  classes  of 
the  population,  in  order  that  all  may  fight  zealously  in  a 
common  cause.  In  the  maritime  cities  this  incentive  to  the 
establishment  of  good  and  just  governments  was  absent. 
The  governing  body  in  the  maritime  peoples  with  small 
territories,  which  I  have  called  simple  urban  peoples,  was 
always  a  single  class  or  single  person,  and  that  governing 
body  was  at  liberty,  if  it  thought  fit,  to  govern  solely  for  the 
promotion  of  its  own  selfish  desires,  because  it  did  not  fear 

1  Herodotus,  1.  59.      [lIei<ri<rrparos]  evdoKinrjffas  iv  tj  vpbs  Meyap^as  yevon^vrj 
(TTpaTrjyiri,  'Siaalav  re  eXwn  (cat  4\\a  anodti-dfitvos  neydXa.  Zpya. 


chap,  v.]  MARITIME  CITIES  43 

invasion  from  foreigners,  and  therefore  did  not  need  to  be 
protected  by  the  willing  exertions  of  its  own  subjects. 

In  regard  to  the  governments  of  individual  cities  our 
information  is  scanty :  we  know  more  about  the  governments 
of  Corinth,  Megara,  and  Naxos  than  about  any 
others.  At  Corinth  the  Dorians,  while  they  were 
making  the  conquest  of  the  territory,  must  have  had  a  strong 
king  as  military  leader ;  but,  when  the  conquest  had  been 
completed  and  the  descendants  of  the  conquerors  had  grown 
into  a  maritime  and  commercial  people,  kingship  became 
superfluous.  About  650  B.C.  we  learn  from  Herodotus,  who 
is  by  four  centuries  our  earliest  informant  on  the  matter, 
that  the  Corinthians  were  ruled  by  a  powerful  clan  called  the 
Bacchiadaj,  and  this  clan  in  order  to  keep  itself  a  distinct 
caste  forbade  its  members  to  marry  anyone  outside  the  clan : 
and  since  Herodotus  pointedly  remarks  that  a  lame  woman 
of  the  Bacchiad  clan  whom  no  Bacchiad  would  marry,  and 
who  was  therefore  allowed  to  marry  outside  the  clan,  had  a 
husband  who  lived  in  a  village,  we  may  conjecture  that  it 
was  usual  for  all  the  Bacchiada3  to  reside  in  the  city  of 
Corinth.1  In  Diodorus,  who  wrote  four  centuries  after 
Herodotus,  we  find  a  statement  that  the  Bacchiadse  were  all 
descended  from  an  ancient  king  of  Corinth  named  Bacchis  : 
the  assertion  is  probable  enough,  but  it  may  have  been 
invented  because  it  seemed  probable.2  What  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Bacchiadse  may  have  been  like  when  first  it  was 
established  we  do  not  know;  but  we  can  be  sure  that 
eventually  they  governed  selfishly,  because  their  overthrow 
was  brought  about  by  violence. 

The  leader  of  the  revolution  that  put  down  the  Bacchiadse 
was  Kypselus.  No  doubt  he  declared  himself  a  champion 
of  the  poorer  citizens,  and  with  their  aid  overpowered  the 
Bacchiadse :  when  the  victory  was  won,  his  adherents,  being 

1  Herodotus,  5.  92.  2.  s  Diodorus  7,  fragment  9. 


44  CORINTH,  MEGARA  [chap.  v. 

devoid  of  political  experience,  were  unable  to  do  anything 
but  submit  obediently  to  his  despotic  commands.  Kypselus 
Corinth.  was  succeeded  as  arbitrary  ruler  of  Corinth  by 
o/the  y  his  son  Periander,  about  whom  many  stories  have 
Kypseiidae.  been  remembered  or  invented ;  in  the  following 
generation  the  heir  was  a  weak  man,  and  despotic  govern- 
ment soon  came  to  an  end. 

After  the  extinction  of  the  house  of  Kypselus,  which 
occurred  about  580  B.C.,  no  precise  statement  has  been 
Corinth.  preserved  to  tell  us  how  Corinth  was  ruled ;  but 
Government  Pindar,  in  distinguishing  the  members  of  the 
after  family  of  the   OligcethidsB   as   being  gentle   to 

580  B.C.  their  countrymen,  implies  that  Corinth  in  his 

time  was  ruled  by  a  group  of  wealthy  families,  and  that 
some  of  them  were  not  gentle.1 

At  Megara  the    succession   of    governments    till   about 

610  B.C.  was  the  same  as  at  Corinth.     Power  was  at  first 

lodged  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  certain  rich 

Megara.  .  . 

families,  but  somewhere  about  640  B.C.  their 
oppressive  rule  provoked  a  popular  insurrection  against  them 
under  the  leadership  of  a  man  named  Theagenes,  who,  when 
the  rebellion  had  proved  successful,  established  himself  as 
despotic  ruler.  About  610  B.C.,  as  we  have  already  noticed, 
Megara  engaged  in  a  long  war  with  Athens  both  by  land  and 
sea.  In  the  war  Megara  lost  Salamis,  and  in  consequence  of 
the  results  of  the  war  took  a  different  form  of  government ; 
but  what  the  new  government  may  have  been  it  is  impossible 
to  determine  with  any  approach  to  accuracy.2 

Naxos  stands  midmost  among  the  many  islands  of  the 
iEgean  Sea.  It  measures  about  eighteen  miles  by  twelve,  and 
is  one  of  the  larger  Greek  islands ;  but  it  consists  of  nothing 
but  a  mountain  with  some  little  valleys  and  amphitheatres 

1  Pindar,  01.  13.  2  and  97. 

2  Aristotle,  Politics,  5.  5,  9  ;  Bckker,  Oxf.,  1837  ;  Theognis. 


chap,  v.]  NAXOS  45 

about  its  sides.  In  one  of  the  small  clear  places  on  the  north- 
west of  the  island,  the  inhabitants  founded  one  of  the 
earliest  of  the  maritime  Greek  cities,  which  like 

Naxos. 

the  island  bore  the  name  of  Naxos.  About 
540  B.C.  a  Naxian  named  Lygdamis,  with  the  aid  of  Peisi- 
stratus  of  Athens,  established  himself  as  despot  in  his  native 
city.1  As  late  as  532  B.C.  we  know  that  Lygdamis  was  still 
reigning :  after  that  time  we  lose  sight  of  the  city  of  Naxos 
for  about  a  generation.2  About  502  we  learn  from  Herodotus 
that  the  government  of  the  city  was  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
the  poor  citizens,  and  that  some  of  the  wealthier  inhabitants 
had  been  driven  into  exile.3  From  these  facts  we  may  infer 
that  since  the  days  of  Lygdamis  there  had  been  a  time  when 
the  rich  class  had  governed  the  city,  or  tried  to  govern  it ; 
that  they  had  offended  the  poorer  citizens,  and  that  a 
revolution  had  occurred,  which  had  ended  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  poor  in  exclusive  enjoyment  of  power,  and  in 
the  expulsion  of  some  of  the  rich  who  had  been  regarded  as 
their  oppressors. 

At  Corinth,  then,  after  it  became  commercial  and  non- 
belligerent, the  first  government  was  the  exclusive  rule  of 
the  wealthy  princes  of  the  blood  royal.     Any  ex- 
clusive rule  of  the   few  rich  was  called  by  the   mentsof 
Greeks  Oligarch la,  or  the  rule  of  few ;  and,  as  the   Corinth, 
earliest  government  of  commercial  Corinth  was   and  Naxos: 

exclusively  in  the  hands  of  men  who  were  noble   general 

.  .  view, 

as  well  as  rich,  we  may  call  it  an  oligarchy  of 

birth.     The  second  government  at  Corinth  was  the  absolute 

rule  of  a  usurper :  to  this  kind  of  government  the  Greeks 

gave  the  name  Tyrannis.     The  third  government  at  Corinth 

was  an  oligarchy,  probably  rather  of  wealth  than  of  birth. 

At  Megara  the  first  known  government  was  oligarchia,  the 

1  Herodotus,  1.  61  and  65. 

-  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  article  'Lygdamis.'  s  Herodotus,  5.  30. 


46  CLASS  GOVERNMENTS  [chap.  v. 

next  tyrannis.  At  Naxos  the  earliest  government  of  which 
we  read  was  tyrannis ;  after  an  interval  of  about  thirty  years 
the  Naxian  government  was  the  exclusive  rule  of  the  poor : 
the  name  given  by  the  Greeks  to  the  exclusive  rule  of  the 
poor  was  Demokratia,  the  rule  of  Demos,  or  of  all  the  citizens, 
among  whom  the  poor  by  their  superior  number  are 
predominant. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  governments  in  the  great 

majority  of  those  small  maritime  commercial  peoples  which 

I   have  called  simple  urban  peoples  are  left  un- 

General  m  . L  t  l       ■ 

view  of  the  noticed  in  Greek  history  and  literature :  references 
etwhablb*  to  tnem  m  Greek  authors  rarely  tell  any  more 
urban  than  that  in  the  century  from  600  to  500  many 

peop  e.  o£  them  were  governed  by  tyranni.    We  have, 

then,  little  direct  testimony  about  the  governments  of  the 
individual  cities.  But  Aristotle  in  his  Politics  takes  it 
for  granted  that  the  government  of  every  Greek  city  was 
either  oligarchia,  or  tyrannis,  or  demokratia.  Hence  we  may 
conclude  that  in  all  the  Greek  cities  about  which  we  have  no 
direct  evidence  the  governments  were  such  as  might  bear 
one  of  these  three  names :  in  other  words,  the  government  in 
any  one  of  these  cities  was  always  either  the  exclusive  rule 
of  the  rich,  or  the  exclusive  rule  of  one  usurper,  or  the 
exclusive  rule  of  the  poor.  It  will  tend  to  simplicity  of 
statement  if  we  adopt  a  single  name  to  denote  all  these  forms 
of  government,  and  I  will  accordingly  call  them  class  govern- 
ments. The  name  is  clearly  descriptive  of  oligarchia  and 
demokratia,  and  it  is  not  ill  adapted  to  designate  tyrannis, 
since  a  tyrannus  was  a  class  by  himself,  having  interests  and 
aims  which  he  shared  with  no  one.  It  is  then  possible  to 
say  briefly  that  the  governments  of  all  the  simple  urban 
peoples  in  early  Greek  history  were  class  governments. 

The  simple  urban  peoples  of  the  Greeks  were  so  strong 
within  their  natural  bulwarks  that  none  of  them  could  be 


chap,  v.]  POLYKRATES  47 

occupied,  conquered,  and  governed  by  any  other  Greek  power. 
It  was,  however,  possible  for  any  one  of  them,  if  it  possessed  a 
great  superiority  of  naval  force,  to  gain  the  power  Poiykrates 
to  dictate  to  the  governments  of  weaker  urban  ofSamos- 
peoples.  Such  a  power  was  gained  on  one  occasion  only 
before  480  B.C.  The  man  who  gained  it  was  Poiykrates, 
tyrannus  of  Samos.  At  some  time  in  his  reign,  which  lasted 
from  532  to  522,  he  dominated  several  islands  and  many 
towns  on  the  shore  of  Asia  Minor.1  He  did  not  attempt  to 
govern  them,  since  that  was  impossible ;  he  left  them  under 
their  native  governments,  but  compelled  those  governments 
to  obey  his  orders  in  their  dealings  with  the  cities  in  their 
neighbourhood.  The  Spartans  were  so  jealous  of  his  power 
that  they  undertook  an  expedition  to  reduce  it.  We  must 
imagine,  since  they  had  no  ships  of  their  own,  that  their 
forces  were  conveyed  across  the  sea  by  some  of  the  islanders 
who  shared  their  jealousy  of  Poiykrates.2  We  know  nothing 
about  the  fortunes  of  the  expedition  except  that  it  failed  to 
achieve  the  result  which  the  Spartans  expected  of  it. 

1  Herodotus,  3.  39;  Thucyd.,  1.  13.  2  Herodotus,  3.  49-56. 


CHAPTER   VI 

COMPOSITE   URBAN   PEOPLES  TO   510  B.C. 

Attica  and  Argolis,  in  the  period  before  510  B.C.,  differed 

from  the  simple  cities  described  in  the  last  chapter :  firstty, 

because    each   of   them    was    large  enough   to 

Argolis.  .  ,.        .  . 

contain  towns  or  districts  ot  some  importance  in 
addition  to  the  ruling  city ;  secondly,  because  those  towns  or 
districts  sometimes  had  a  will  of  their  own;  and  thirdly, 
because  the  countries  themselves  were  not  entirely  exempt 
from  the  need  of  waging  wars  by  land.  In  regard  to  Argolis 
it  has  already  been  noticed  that  the  towns  of  Mykence  and 
Tiryns  and  the  districts  of  Kynuria  and  Thyreatis  might  be 
hard  to  keep  in  subordination : x  a  proof  of  this  was  given  in 
480  B.C.  when  the  town  of  Mykense  sent  eighty  hoplites  to 
take  part  in  the  defence  of  Greece  at  Thermopylae,  though 
the  Argives  gave  them  no  permission  to  do  so,  and  them- 
selves refused  to  send  a  contingent.2  The  wars  of  the 
Argives  in  the  time  of  Pheidon  before  700  B.C.  have  also 
been  already  mentioned:3  at  a  later  date  in  547  B.C., 
they  had  to  fight  again  in  a  vain  attempt  to  defend  the 
districts  of  Kynuria  and  Thyreatis  from  conquest  by  the 
Spartans.* 

As  the  Argives  needed  to  exert  themselves  to  ensure 
their  control  over  Mykense,  and,  till  547  B.C.,  over  Kynuria 
and    Thyreatis,  and    as    they    waged   some    wars    against 

1  See  p.  31.  2  Herodotus,  7.  202. 

s  See  p.  32.  *  Herodotus,  1.  82. 

48 


chap,  vi.]  ARGOS,  ATTICA  49 

external  enemies  they  found  it  advantageous  to  have  a 
single  man  as  their  ruler  to  direct  their  operations;  and 
accordingly  they  retained  their  old  hereditary  Government 
kingship  in  ages  when  kingly  power  had  been  of  Argos. 
abolished  in  all  the  simple  city  states.  In  480  B.C.  there 
was  still  a  king  reigning  in  Argos  by  hereditary  right.1 
The  Argive  kings,  however,  after  547  B.C.,  were  incon- 
spicuous, and  in  480  B.C.  the  supreme  power  in  Argos 
belonged  to  a  council  in  which  the  king  was  no  doubt  the 
presiding  officer.'-  At  that  time,  the  government  of  Argos  was 
something  like  a  constitutional  kingship  in  mediaeval  Europe. 

Attica,  after  the  Dorians  had  finished  their  migrations 
and  were  settled  in  the  Peloponnesus,  was,  like  all  the  Greek 
territories  except  Lacedsemonia  and  those  that  Attica. 
bordered  on  it,  exempt  for  ages  from  all  thought  of  abolition  of 
serious  external  war ;  at  most,  the  Athenians  only  mgs  ip" 
engaged  in  trivial  frays  on  their  borders  against  the  Megarians 
or  the  Boeotians.  Hence  the  Attic  nobles,  called  Eupatridse, 
with  the  princes  of  the  kingly  family,  thought,  perhaps  as 
early  as  800  B.C.,  that  they  had  no  further  need  of  kings  to 
act  as  their  leaders.  It  is  probable  that  till  about  650  B.C. 
there  was  no  acute  opposition  between  the  interests  of  the 
city  of  Athens  and  the  interests  of  the  country  districts : 
for,  if  the  Eupatridre  had  foreseen  the  sharp  strife  that  after- 
wards ensued  between  the  men  of  the  Plain  (which  included 
AtheDs),  the  men  of  the  Sea  Cliff,  and  the  men  of  the 
Highlands,  they  would  have  perceived  that  kingly  power 
might  yet  be  useful  for  holding  the  city  of  Athens  and 
the  country  districts  together.  As  it  was,  they  gradually 
diminished  the  prerogatives  of  the  kings,  and  in  683  B.C. 
finally  abolished  the  kingly  office.3 

When  the  kings  were  gone,  the  general  control  of  policy 

1  Herodotus,  7.  149.  ■  Ibid.,  7.  148. 

3  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  articles  '  Eupatrida;,'  'Archon.' 

D 


50  EUPATRID.E  [chap.  vi. 

was  vested  in  a  council  of  Eupatridae,  and  details  of  ad- 
ministration were  entrusted  to  a  board  of  nine  archons, 
Government  aPP0U1ted  annually  by  the  council.1  For  the 
of  the  hearing  of  trials  for  high  treason  there  was  a 

upa  n  ae.  j^  court  sitting  in  the  Prytaneum,  or  House  of 
Government,  under  the  presidency  of  the  four  Phylobasileis, 
or  Tribe  kings,  who  were  at  the  head  of  the  four  tribes  into 
which  the  people  had  from  unremembered  ages  been 
divided,  and  who  were  themselves  members  of  the  caste 
of  the  Eupatridae.2 

Each  of  the  tribes  in  Attica  was  divided  into  twelve 
naukrariae.  When  Kleisthenes  long  afterwards  established 
Attica :  im-  the  demes,  he  set  them  up  '  in  lieu  of  the 
portanceof     naukrariae.' 8    As   nine   tenths   or   more   of  the 

the  country 

districts  be-  demes  were  situated  outside  the  city,  we  may 
fore  600  B.C.   -nfer  tjiafc  tke  naukrariae  aiso  were  for  the  most 

part  rural  districts.  Each  naukraria  contributed  an  equal 
quota,  to  the  naval  and  military  forces  of  Attica,  namely,  a 
ship  and  two  horsemen;  therefore  the  greater  part  of  the 
expense  of  providing  the  naval  and  military  forces  fell  on 
the  population  outside  of  Athens,  and  it  would  seem  that 
the  country  was  economically  more  important  than  the  city. 
The  government  of  the  Eupatridae  was  unquestionably 
what  the  Greeks  called  an  oligarchia,  since  its  members 
Character  were  all  of  noble  birth,  and  no  doubt  many  of 
of  the  them  were  rich;  but  it  is  quite  likely  that  more 

government 

of  the  than  half  the  rich  men  in  the  country  may  have 

Eupatridae.  not  keen  Eupatridae,  and  therefore  without  any 
share  in  the  work  of  government.  The  government  of  the 
Eupatridae  was  conspicuously  an  oligarchy  of  birth  rather 
than  of  wealth.     Some  light  is  thrown  on  its  general  merits 

1  Aristotle,  Ath.  Pol.,  19. 

2  Plutarch,   Solon,    19,   verbal  quotation  from   the   thirteenth   Axon   of 
Solon's  laws  ;  Pollux,  8.  111. 

3  Ath.  Pol.,  21 :  tovs  Srjfiovs  dvrl  rQiv  vavKpapiQy. 


chap,  vi.]  EUPATRID^E  51 

by  an  event  of  which  the  date  can  only  be  approximately 
determined.  Somewhere  between  636  and  624  a  dis- 
tinguished Athenian  named  Kylon,  who  had  been  victor  in 
a  contest  at  Olympia,  and  had  married  a  daughter  of 
Theagenes,  tyrannus  of  Megara,  designed  with  the  aid 
of  his  father-in-law  to  destroy  the  government  of  the 
Eupatridse,  and  set  himself  u'p  as  tyrannus  in  Athens.  He 
obtained  from  Theagenes  a  force  of  Megarian  soldiers,  and 
also  gathered  adherents  among  the  young  Athenians  of 
about  his  own  age :  thus  supported,  he  seized  and  occupied 
the  acropolis  of  Athens.  The  Eupatridse  called  on  the 
people  of  Attica  to  come  and  besiege  him,  and  the  country- 
folk obeyed  the  summons.  The  invaders  of  the  acropolis 
were  reduced  to  desperate  straits  for  lack  of  food  and  water. 
Kylon  and  his  brother  contrived  to  escape;  but  the  rest 
of  the  invaders,  being  unable  to  resist,  took  sanctuary  as 
suppliants  at  an  altar  in  the  acropolis.  The  ready  response 
of  the  country-folk  to  the  summons  of  the  Eupatridse 
proves  that  the  Eupatridoe  were  not  generally  unpopular,  or, 
at  any  rate,  that  their  government  was  generally  thought 
preferable  to  that  of  the  adventurer  Kylon.1 

In  the  half-century  from   650  B.C.  to  600  B.C.  it  is  clear 
that  the  condition  of  Attica  underwent  important  changes. 
One  cause  of  changed  conditions  may  have  been 
economic,  and  may  have  consisted  in  the  adoption   conditions 
of  new  pursuits  by  the  wealthy  class.     The  other  °5°  B-C- 

.  6oo  B.C. 

cause  is  well  known :  somewhere  about  610  B.C. 

the  Athenians  were  involved  in  a  war  with  Megara,  which 

was  in  all  likelihood  their  first  serious  war  with  a  foreign 

enemy. 

Until  after  the  time  of  Kylon's  conspiracy,  which  must  be 

1  The  story  of  Kylon  is  told  in  Herodotus,  5.  71  ;  Thucydides,  1.  126. 
Where  Herodotus  and  Thucydides  are  at  variance  I  follow  Thucydides. 
See  also  Plutarch,  Solon,  8-10. 


52  WAK  ABOUT  SALAMIS  [chap.  vi. 

placed  between  636  and  624,  there  is  no  indication  of  strife 
between  classes :  before  594,  when  Solon  became  archon, 
New  the  rich  had    become    grievous    oppressors    of 

economic  the  poor,  and  the  Eupatridae  could  not  or  would 
not  succour  the  oppressed.  It  is,  on  the  whole, 
likely  that  between  650  and  600  the  rich  men  of  Athens 
became  for  the  first  time  active  in  maritime  and  commercial 
enterprise,  and  thereby  greatly  increased  their  wealth.  It 
has  further  been  conjectured  that  the  poor  may  have  been 
reduced  to  much  greater  poverty  by  a  substitution  of 
payments  in  coined  money  for  a  system  of  barter ;  and  the 
conjecture  is  plausible  because  the  merchants  engaged  in 
foreign  trade  would  know  the  value  of  goods  reckoned  in 
money,  and  the  small  cultivators  would  not. 

When  Ky Ion's  fellow  conspirators  and  his  Megarian 
soldiers  had  taken  asylum  at  the  altar  on  the  acropolis,  the 
Atti    .  Athenians  did  not  wish  them  to  die  where  they 

first  foreign  were,  lest  the  altar  should  be  profaned  and  some 
divine  vengeance  should  follow.  Accordingly 
the  Prytaneis  of  the  Naukrarise,  who  seem  to  be  identical 
with  the  four  Phylobasileis,  bade  them  leave  their  sanctuary, 
promising  that  their  lives  should  be  spared ;  but  afterwards 
the  archons  of  the  year,  of  whom  Megakles,  the  Alkmaeonid, 
was  one,  perfidiously  put  them  to  death.1  The  Megarians 
resented  the  murder  of  their  fellow  citizens,  and  some  years 
later  Athens  and  Megara  were  at  war  for  many  years  both 
by  sea  and  by  land.  The  war  ended  when  the  Athenians, 
directed  by  Solon,  succeeded  in  taking  the  important  island 
of  Salamis,  which  lay  close  to  their  harbours,  and  must 
when  in  the  possession  of  the  Megarians  have  enabled  them 
to  waylay  the  Athenian  ships.  The  acquisition  of  Salamis 
made  the  Athenians  safe  in  their  home  waters,  and  the 
advantage  that  they  gained  by  holding  it  may  have  suggested 

1  Thucydides,  1.  126 ;  Herodotus,  5.  71. 


chap,  vt.]  SOLON  53 

to  them  the  seizure  of  another  commanding  naval  station  at 
a  distance.  Within  a  few  years  after  the  capture  of  Salamis 
they  succeeded  in  occupying  Sigeuin,  close  to  the  strait  of 
the  Hellespont  leading  to  the  Black  Sea,  and  in  getting  it 
adjudged  to  them  at  the  end  of  a  war  by  Periander  of 
Corinth  acting  as  arbitrator.1 

The  long  war  against  Megara,  fought  both  by  land  and 
sea,  must  have  converted  a  large  part  of  the  poor  peasantry 
of  Attica  into  trained  soldiers  formidable  to  the  Solon, 
rich  merchants  who  had  oppressed  them.  In  S94  B,c- 
594  B.C.  the  rich  men  conceded  the  demand  made  no  doubt 
by  the  poor,  that  Solon  should  be  archon,  and  have  full 
powers  to  deal  with  the  existing  distress,  and  to  make  new 
permanent  laws  and  a  new  constitution. 

The  original  sources  from  which  the  later  Greeks  drew 
their  knowledge  of  Solon's  doings  were  his  laws  and  his 
poems.     His  laws  were  inscribed  on  revolving 

,  ,  .  i         t  -i  -i    i    •  it       Authorities 

quadrangular  prisms,  and  exhibited  in  a  public   forthe 
place,  where  they  remained  at  least  till  the  time  ^story  of 

r  J  Solon. 

of  Perikles : 2  complete  copies  of  the  poems  may 
probably  have  been  in  existence  as  late  as  the  time  of 
Plutarch.  Notices  of  the  laws  and  quotations  from  the  poems 
may  probably  have  occurred  in  the  writings  of  later  Greek 
historians  as  Ephorus  and  Androtion :  our  knowledge  of  them 
is  derived  from  the  Aristotelian  Atheniensium  Politeia,  and 
from  the  life  of  Solon  by  Plutarch.  It  is  evident  that  Plutarch 
was  careful  in  his  reading  of  Solon's  laws :  the  Atheniensium 
Politeia  seems  to  have  borrowed  largely  from  popular 
historical  works  and  from  pamphlets ;  but  its  author  has  the 
great  merit  of  giving  his  reasons  for  his  opinions,  and  thus 
provides  us  with  means  of  judging  which  of  them  are  correct. 

1  Herodotus,  5.  95. 

2  Plutarch,  Solon,  25  ;  quotation  from  Kratinus  who  was  contemporary 
with  Perikles. 


54  CLASSES  IN  [chap.  vi. 

Solon  made  temporary  enactments  to  relieve  the  poor 
from  their  extreme  distress,  established  permanent  laws 
Solon's  tending  to  prevent  injustice  or  oppression  in  the 

constitution.  fut,ure>  and  finally  devised  a  new  constitution.  In 
his  constitutional  reforms  he  tried  to  do  what  no  man  before 
him  had  attempted,  and  only  one  Greek  after  him1  succeeded 
in  accomplishing:  he  tried  to  supply  a  community  ruled 
by  a  single  commercial  city  with  a  government  that  was  not 
the  uncontrolled  rule  of  a  single  class  or  of  a  single  person, 
but  was  founded  on  a  fair  division  of  powers  among  all  classes. 

Before  Solon's  time  all  political  power  had  belonged  to 
one  class,  the  Eupatridre,  distinguished  from  the  rest  by 
Classes  in  birth.  Solon  recognised  four  classes,  discrimin- 
Attica.  a£e(j  from   one   another  not   by  birth   but  by 

gradations  of  wealth.  The  four  classes  recognised  by  him 
were  (1)  Pentakosiomedimni ;  (2)  Hippeis,  or  horsemen,  able 
to  keep  a  horse  for  service  in  war  ;  (3)  Zeugitse,  small  land- 
owners with  a  yoke  of  oxen,  and  (4)  Thetes,  labourers  for 
hire.  The  Hippeis,  the  Zeugitse,  and  the  Thetes  were 
recognised  classes  before  his  time,  as  we  can  see  from  the 
following  facts.  The  author  of  the  Aristotelian  treatise  on 
the  Athenian  Constitution  did  not  know  what  was  the  proper 
definition  of  the  second  class,  the  Hippeis.2  Hence  it  follows 
that  no  definition  of  it  was  given  in  Solon's  published  laws, 
since  any  definition  of  it  there  given  would  have  been  known 
to  the  author;  and  as  Solon  gave  no  definition,  he  must 
have  been  sure  that  every  one  already  understood  who  the 
Hippeis  were.  The  Thetes  were  a  distinct  class  even  in 
Homer's  age  long  before  Solon's  days:  else  the  shade  of 
Achilles  could  never  have  said  to  Odysseus,  '  I  would  rather 
be  Thete  to  a  poor  tenant-farmer  than  be  king  of  all  the 
dead.' 3  Between  the  Hippeis  and  the  Thetes,  and  bordering 
on  each  of  these  two  classes,  came  the  Zeugitse ;  and  there- 

1  Kleisthenes.  2  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  7.  3  Odyssey,  11.  489-91. 


chap,  vi.]  ATTICA  55 

fore  they  also  must  have  been  a  distinct  class  before  Solon's 
time. 

The  Pentakosiomedimni  were  the  richest  class,  comprising 
all  those  who  gained  from  their  lands  every  year  not  less 
than    five    hundred    medimni     (about     seven 
hundred  bushels),  in  aggregate  produce  of  corn,   of  0ffices 
oil,  and  wine,  or  had  from  any  source  an  income  am°n£: 

classes. 

of  five  hundred  drachmae.  The  clumsy  name 
Pentakosiomedimni  looks  as  if  it  were  made  by  a  lawgiver, 
and  the  precise  statements  which  inform  us  of  its  meaning- 
may  probably  be  copied  from  a  definition  of  it  given  in 
Solon's  published  laws :  hence  it  is  likely  that  Solon  found 
only  the  classes  of  Hippeis,  Zeugitse,  and  Thetes  already 
recognised,  and  that  from  the  Hippeis  he  took  out  the 
wealthiest  and  formed  them  into  a  new  class  of  rich  men. 
Among  three  of  his  classes  he  distributed  all  public  offices. 
The  Pentakosiomedimni  were  alone  eligible  to  the  archon- 
ship  and  the  treasurership ;  the  Hippeis  and  the  Zeugitse 
could  hold  lesser  offices  suitable  to  their  condition ;  and  the 
Thetes  alone  were  incapable  of  holding  places  in  the 
administration.1 

The  organs  in  the  government  were  these:  (1)  Nine 
Archons,  (2)  a  Senate,  (3)  Popular  law  courts,  called 
Dikasteria,  (4)  a  Council  of  Four  Hundred,  Solon,s 
(5)  Assemblies  of  the  citizens.  The  board  of  constitution: 
nine  archons  proved  to  be  the  strongest  of  these 
five  organs,  and  therefore  it  is  important  to  examine  the 
evidence  as  to  the  method  by  which  the  archons  were 
appointed.  The  Atheniensium  Politeia  says  they  were 
taken  by  lot  from  forty  selected  candidates.  But  the  author 
confesses  that  his  opinion  is  founded  on  the  practice  pre- 
vailing in  his  own  day,  two  and  a  half  centuries  after  Solon, 
in  the  appointment  of  treasurer : 2  and  his  opinion  is  incon- 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  7.  2  Ibid.,  8. 


56  SOLON'S  [chap.  vi. 

sistent  with  his  own  statement,  made  later  on,  that  strife 
about  the  appointment  of  archons  within  four  years  made  it 
impossible  to  have  any  archons  at  all.1  As  strife  about  that 
which  is  settled  by  hazard  is  inconceivable,  it  seems  certain 
that  Solon  simply  ordered  that  the  archons  should  be  elected 
by  the  whole  Attic  people.  If  any  confirmation  of  this 
conclusion  is  needed,  it  is  found  in  a  passage  in  the  Politics 
where  Aristotle  says  that  Solon  gave  the  common  people 
only  the  necessary  minimum  of  power,  namely,  the  right  of 
electing  magistrates,  and  of  holding  them  to  account  at  the 
end  of  their  year  of  office.2  As  none  but  a  Pentakosio- 
medimnus  was  eligible  as  archon,  and  as  the  archons  were 
chosen  by  free  election,  Solon  did  his  best  to  ensure  that 
the  chief  executive  magistrates  should  be  well  qualified  by 
station  and  the  public  estimation  of  them  to  fulfil  their 
important  duties. 

The  Senate  was  called  the  council  of  the  Areus  Pagus,  or 
in  Latin  the  Areopagus,  and  was  intended  to  take  the  place 
of  the  old  council  of  the  Eupatridse.  It  was  to 
consist  of  archons  and  ex-archons,  and  its 
members  were  to  hold  their  places  in  it  for  life.  We  do  not 
know  what  functions  were  entrusted  to  it;  but  its  power 
was  large,  since  it  was  called  guardian  of  the  laws.3 

The  powers  of  the  Dikasteria,  the  popular  law-courts,  were 

very  large,  since  they  had  the  right  of  hearing  appeals  from 

the  sentences  of  archons,  and,  if  they  thought  fit, 

Dilcctstcrici 

of  reversing  them.  It  is  probable  also  that 
when  an  archon  rendered  account  of  his  doings  at  the  end 
of  his  year  of  office,  he  was  to  render  it  before  a  dikasterion. 
In  regard  to  the  council  of  Four  Hundred  everything  is 
obscure.  We  do  not  know  to  what  body  or  bodies  Solon 
intended  to  entrust  the  work  of  making  new  laws,  when 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol,  13.  ■  Arist.,  Politics,  2.  12,  1274a. 

5  Atfu  Pol.,  8,  vofio<pv\aKe7v. 


chap,  vi.]  CONSTITUTION  57 

new  laws  were  needed;  but  Plutarch   thought  that  both 
the    council    of    Four    Hundred   and    the    senate  of    the 
Areopagus  had  some  power   of  checking  hasty   Councii  of 
legislation.     His  view  probably  was  that  no  new    Four 
law  could  be  proposed  to  the  assembly  of  the 
people  till  it  had  been  approved  both   by  the  Areopagus 
and  by  the  Four  Hundred.1 

From  what  Aristotle  says  in  a  passage  cited  a  little  way 
back  from  the  Politics,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Solon 
intended  that  an  assembly  of  the  people  should  Assemblies 
be  held  regularly  only  once  a  year  for  election  of  the  people, 
of  magistrates,  and  for  appointing  a  dikasterion  to  hear 
the  outgoing  magistrates  render  an  account  of  their 
proceedings.  If  new  laws  were  wanted  they  must  be 
proposed  before  an  assembly  of  the  people,  but  Solon  hoped 
that  new  legislation  might  be  long  deferred. 

When  Solon  had  made  all  his  changes,  economic,  legal, 
and  constitutional,  he  went  away  from  Attica  for  ten  years, 
hoping  that  his  regulations  might  for  that  space    IU  success 
be  kept  intact.2     But  his  constitution  only  re-   of  Solon's 

j    .      j.  n  i  •  j       r       r  Ti.     constitution. 

mamed  in  lull  working  order  lor  lour  years.  It 
was  found  that  in  his  plan  of  government  the  chief  power 
was  centred  in  the  archons,  and  strife  arose  about  the 
elections  of  these  important  officers.  In  the  fifth  and  the 
ninth  years  of  the  new  constitution,  the  strife  was  so  hot 
that  no  archons  were  elected :  then  about  582  B.C.  a  man 
named  Damasias  was  chosen  as  chief  archon,  and  after  the 
end  of  his  year  of  office  kept  himself  in  power  for  fourteen 
months  as  a  tyrannus,  and  had  to  be  put  down  by  force. 
After  his  deposition,  the  people  of  Attica  resolved  to  have 
ten  archons  instead  of  nine,  taking  five  from  the  Eupatridas, 
three  -from  country  landowners,  and  two  from  those  engaged 
in   trades   or   professions.      Whether   this   new   regulation 

1  Plutarch,  Solon,  18,  19.  2  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  11. 


58  PEISISTRATUS  [chap.  vi. 

remained  in  force  more  than  one  year  we  do  not  know,  but 
the  people  was  divided  into  three  angry  factions.  The  rich 
men  of  the  Plain  close  to  Athens  desired  that  power  should 
belong  exclusively  to  the  rich,  and  were  led  by  Lykurgus ; 
the  men  of  the  Sea  Cliff  (Paralia),  who  desired  the  supremacy 
of  the  middle  class  or  some  moderate  government,  found 
a  leader  in  Megakles,  head  of  the  Alkmseonidse,  the  most 
distinguished  noble  family  in  Attica ;  the  poor  highlanders 
of  Diakria,  who  wished  to  gain  some  power  for  the  poor,  took 
Peisistratus  as  their  champion.1 

It  appears  that  at  some  time  not  long  before  560  B.C. 
Attica  was  involved  in  a  fresh  war  with  the  Megarians :  for 
Peisistratus  Herodotus  tells  us  that  Peisistratus  distinguished 
560  B.C.-  himself  by  capturing  Nissea,  the  port  of  the  city 
of  Megara.2  When  this  success  had  made  him 
famous,  desiring  to  gain  supreme  power,  he  wounded  him- 
self, and  saying  that  his  wounds  had  been  inflicted  by  his 
political  opponents,  asked  an  assembly  of  the  people  to  grant 
him  a  bodyguard  of  fifty  men  armed  with  clubs.  On  the 
motion  of  a  citizen  named  Aristion,  his  proposal  was 
granted :  he  probably  increased  his  bodyguard  much 
beyond  fifty,  succeeded  in  taking  the  acropolis,  and 
established  himself  as  despot.  His  power  was  not  at  first 
firmly  established.  Twice  his  opponents  the  Alkmseonida? 
succeeded  in  driving  him  into  exile,  once  for  about  five  years, 
and  once  for  about  ten.  It  was  probably  a  knowledge  of 
the  insecurity  of  his  position  that  led  him  to  avoid  giving 
offence  to  his  countrymen  by  selfish  behaviour:  from  his 
accession  to  power  till  his  death  thirty  three  years  later,  he 
administered  the  affairs  of  Attica  with  moderation,  and 
rather  as  a  citizen  among  citizens  than  as  a  tyrant.3 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  13.  2  Herodotus,  1.  59. 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  16,  Siqkci  to.  kotA  tx\v  wtikiv  /xerpius  nal  fidWov  iroXirtKuit 
%  TvpavviKws. 


chap,  vi.]  PEISISTRATUS  59 

Peisistratus  allowed  archons  to  be  elected  every  year,  and 
only  used  his  influence  to  ensure  that  one  of  the  archons 
should    be    a    member    of    his    own    family.1   Govern. 
Elections   of  archons   implied  meetings   of  all   mentof 

Ppisist.rci.tiis 

the  citizens ;  and  if  he  allowed  meetings  he 
may  probably  also  have  permitted  the  Dikasteria  and  the 
Four  Hundred  to  exercise  their  functions  under  his  super- 
vision. On  the  whole  it  seems  likely  that,  while  he  kept  the 
substance  of  power  in  his  own  control,  he  let  the  people  use 
the  forms  of  Solon's  constitution :  if  this  was  his  course,  his 
government  was  managed  on  the  same  methods  as  were 
adopted  afterwards  in  the  Florentine  Republic  by  Cosmo  de 
Medici  and  his  grandson  Lorenzo.  The  condition  of  Attica 
was  such  as  to  give  him  always  one  useful  task  to  perform : 
he  had  to  bring  about  reconciliation  between  the  factions  of 
the  Plain,  the  Sea  Cliff,  and  the  Highlands.  He  accom- 
plished that  task  by  lending  money  to  impoverished  yeomen 
to  help  them  to  till  their  lands,  and  by  setting  up  courts  of 
local  justice:2  from  his  time  the  whole  Attic  people  were 
free  from  violent  quarrels  between  localities.  He  also 
promoted  the  foreign  trade  of  the  Athenians  by  getting 
authority  or  influence  in  several  Greek  settlements  outside 
Attica.  He  established  or  restored  his  sovereignty  in 
Sigeum ;  Miltiades,  an  Athenian,  became  ruler  of  the 
Thracian  Chersonese,  and  recognised  Peisistratus  as  his 
suzerain ;  and  in  the  important  island  of  Naxos  Peisistratus 
established  Lygdamis  as  tyrannus  and  so  brought  the  island 
into  the  position  of  a  protected  state.3 

Peisistratus  died  in  527  B.C.  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son 
Hippias.  For  thirteen  years,  till  514  B.C.,  Hippias  followed 
the  example  of  his  father  in  all  respects ;  but  when 
Harmodius    and    Aristogeiton,   seeking    vengeance    for    a 

1  Thucydides,  6.  54.  -  Arist.,  Alh.  Pol.,  16. 

3  On  Lygdamis,  see  Herodotus,  1.  61,  65. 


60  HIPPIAS  [chap.  vi. 

merely  personal  affront,  murdered  his  brother  Hipparchus, 
and  were  only  prevented  by  an  accident  from  taking  his  own 
Hi    ias  ^e'  ke  was  comPeUed   to  govern  with  despotic 

527  B.C.-        severity.     His  reign,   however,   only  lasted    till 
510  B.C.,  and  during  the  four  years  from  514  B.C. 
to  510  B.C.  the  Athenians  had  their  only  experience  of  harsh 
tyrannic  government. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SPARTA,   ATHENS,  AND   PERSIA,   510  B.C.-480  B.C. 

It  has  been  shown  already  that  till  510  B.C.  none  of  the 
Greek  peoples  outside  the  Peloponnesus  except  Megara 
experienced  an  invasion  of  its  territory.  As  these  peoples 
enjoyed  immunity  from  invasion,  they  did  not  need  to  co- 
operate for  their  mutual  defence  :  and  thus  it  followed  that 
because  they  had  no  important  relations  with  one  another 
of  a  hostile  character,  they  also  had  no  important  relations 
in  the  way  of  alliance  or  friendship.  Such  dealings  as  they 
had  with  one  another  either  of  a  hostile  or  a  friendly 
character  were  purely  commercial,  and  only  settled  how 
their  ships  should  behave  on  their  voyages.  Dealings 
about  maritime  commerce  do  not  bring  about  such  intimate 
relations  between  governments  as  dealings  about  territory ; 
and  in  the  absence  of  questions  about  territory  the  govern- 
ments of  the  peoples  outside  the  Peloponnesus  remained 
aloof  from  one  another,  and,  being  little  acquainted  with 
one  another,  regarded  each  other  with  indifference  or  with 
distrust  and  suspicion. 

The  political  isolation  of  the  peoples  outside  the  Pelopon- 
nesus had  as  its  origin  their  belief  in  the  impregnability  of 
their  territories.     Till  510  B.C.  that  belief  was   changes  in 
justified   by  experience.     Between  510  B.C.  and   the  Greek 

.  ,  i     ,.  i        r  o  world,  Sio 

480  B.C.  it  was  shattered,  first  by  four  Spartan    B.c-480 

invasions  of  Attica,  and  then  by  the  beginnings   BC- 

and  the  culmination  of  a  conflict  between  the  Greeks  and 

61 


62  SPARTAN  INVASIONS  OF  [chap.  vii. 

the  Persians.  In  the  present  chapter  I  shall  tell  of  the  inva- 
sions of  Attica  by  the  Spartans,  of  an  important  consequent 
change  of  constitution  in  Attica,  and  of  the  wars  of  the 
Greeks  against  the  Persian  kings  Dareius  and  Xerxes. 

It  has  been  noted  already  that  between  532  and  522  the 
Spartans  were  jealous  of  the  power  of  Polykrates,  the  tyran- 
Sparta  nus  °f  Samos,  and  tried  to  diminish  it.     In  519 

jealous  of  or  possibly  earlier  Kleomenes  the  First  succeeded 
S2o  B.C.-  his  father  Anaxandrides  as  one  of  the  kings  of 
510  B.C.  Sparta,  and  from  his  accession  took  greater 
interest  in  the  doings  of  the  peoples  outside  the  Pelopon- 
nesus than  any  Spartan  before  him.  He  saw  that  Hippias 
of  Athens  was  sovereign  of  Attica  and  Sigeuin,  and  suzerain 
over  Naxos  and  the  Thracian  Chersonesus.  It  is  probable 
that  he  thought  Hippias  was  likely  to  act  in  concert  with 
Argos,  the  hereditary  foe  of  Sparta,  and  thus  to  imperil  the 
predominance  of  the  Spartans  in  the  Peloponnesus :  co- 
operation of  Hippias  with  Argos  was  the  more  probable 
because  Peisistratus  had  taken  as  his  last  wife  a  lady  of 
Argive  nationality.1  Whatever  may  have  been  the  motives 
of  Kleomenes,  it  is  certain  that  he  acted  to  the  best  of  his 
ability  to  diminish  the  power  both  of  Argos  and  of  Athens. 

Even  so  early  as  519  B.C.  Kleomenes  showed  his  desire  to 
weaken  Athens.  In  that  year  the  Plataeans  were  threatened 
Two  by    the   Thebans    and    asked    protection    from 

Spartan  Sparta:    Kleomenes  advised   them  to  take  the 

invasions  of  .  .     ,  .        .  .         XT. 

Attica,  Athenians  as  their  protectors,  hoping  that  Hip- 

510  B.C.  pjas  would  by  aiding  the  Plataeans  give  offence 
to  the  Thebans  and  so  involve  himself  in  a  quarrel.2    In 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  art.  '  Peisistratus, '  vol.' 3,  p.  172,  from  Plutarch, 
Cato  Major,  24. 

2  Herodotus,  6.  108.  The  date  at  which  the  Platreans  took  the  Athenians 
as  their  protectors  is  fully  established  by  Thuc.  3.  68  end,  but  is  stated 
wrongly  by  two  writers  generally  distinguished  for  accuracy — Blakesley, 
note  to  Herodotus,  6.  108,  and  Grote,  ch.  31. 


chap,  vil]  ATTICA  63 

510  B.C.  Kleomenes  resolved  that  he  would  expel  Hippias 
from  Attica  by  force :  he  sent  one  expedition  under  Anchi- 
molius,  and  afterwards  led  another  himself;  in  the  second 
he  succeeded  in  driving  Hippias  into  exile.  It  is  true  that 
he  professed  to  be  moved  to  his  war  against  Hippias  by 
oracles  from  Delphi,  which  bade  him  set  Athens  free  from 
its  tyrant ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  was  also  influenced  by 
a  desire  to  keep  Athens  weak,  because,  as  soon  as  the 
Athenians  began  to  use  their  freedom  to  set  up  a  strong 
government  such  as  suited  them,  he  again  intervened  by 
force  to  prevent  the  establishment  of  that  government  for 
which  his  own  actions  had  cleared  the  ground. 

After  the  expulsion  of  Hippias,  the  Athenians  were  for 
two  years  divided  into  two  factions  whose  leaders  were 
Isagoras  and  Kleisthenes.  As  long  as  the  Two  more 
Athenians  were  divided  and  therefore  weak  Spartan 
Kleomenes  let  them  alone;  but  when  at  the  Attica, 
end  of  the  two  years  Kleisthenes  had  got  s°8  BC* 
the  better  of  his  opponent  and  was  beginning  to  found 
a  strong  republican  government,  Kleomenes  resolved  to 
intervene  again.  His  decision  to  meddle  again  proves 
that  he  wished  not  that  Athens  should  be  well  governed, 
but  that  it  should  be  weak.  In  508  he  made  two  fresh 
invasions  of  Attica  for  the  purpose  of  expelling  Kleisthenes. 
In  the  first  the  force  employed  was  too  weak  to  effect  any- 
thing; in  preparation  for  the  second  Kleomenes  gathered 
soldiers  from  all  the  states  in  the  Peloponnesus  which  were 
ready  to  defer  to  the  superior  power  of  Sparta,  obtained  also 
a  contingent  from  Corinth,  and  induced  the  Chalkidians  from 
Eubcea  and  the  Boeotians  to  make  simultaneous  invasions 
of  Attica  in  support  of  his  operations.  The  plight  of  Attica 
when  invaded  on  three  sides  by  the  chief  terrestrial  powers 
of  Greece  seemed  almost  hopeless ;  but  Kleomenes  was 
deserted   by  his  Corinthian  contingent  and  by  Demaratus, 


64  POWER  OF  SPARTA  [chap.  vii. 

the  other  King  of  Sparta,  and  the  invasions  melted  away, 
leaving  Kleisthenes  and  the  Athenians  unhurt.1 

The  invasion  of  Attica  in  508  B.C.  by  Peloponnesians, 
Chalkidians,  and  Boeotians  is  of  great  historical  importance, 
Hegemony  n°k  only  as  the  first  enterprise  in  which  many 
of  Sparta  Greek  powers  acted  in  concert,  but  also  as  afford  - 
onnesus,  ing  the  earliest  tangible  proof  of  the  predominant 
508  B.C.  position  attained  by  Sparta  in  the  Peloponnesus. 
Before  the  invasion  was  made '  Kleomenes  gathered  an  army 
out  of  all  the  Peloponnesus,  not  saying  for  what  purpose  he 
was  gathering  it.' 2  Although  Herodotus  says  that  the  army 
was  collected  from  all  the  Peloponnesus,  there  were  no  doubt 
some  Peloponnesian  peoples  which  did  not  contribute  any 
soldiers :  among  them  must  have  been  the  Achseans  whose 
land  was  separated  from  Sparta  by  the  most  precipitous 
mountains  in  all  Hellas;  the  Argives,  old  rivals  of  the 
Spartans;  and  the  citizens  of  Epidaurus  and  Hermione 
whose  cities  lay  on  the  side  of  Argolis  remote  from  Sparta. 
The  remaining  powers  in  the  Peloponnesus  other  than 
Sparta  itself  were  Elis,  many  villages  and  small  towns  in 
Arcadia,  the  strong  inland  military  fortresses  of  Tegea  and 
Mantineia,  Phlius,  also  lying  inland,  and  the  maritime  cities 
of  Sikyon  and  Corinth.  All  these  were  probably  prepared 
to  defer  to  the  wishes  ot  the  Spartans,  and  send  them  troops 
when  required  to  do  so ;  but  the  Corinthians  at  least  were 
not  entirely  dependent  on  them,  as  they  proved  by  refusing 
after  their  arrival  in  Attica  to  fight  on  the  side  of  Kleomenes : 
it  is  likely  also  that  all  the  other  towns  had  some  will  of 
their  own,  and  could  not  be  lightly  coerced.  The  amount  of 
independence  enjoyed  by  some  of  the  allies  of  the  Spartans 
was  shown  a  few  years  later,  when  the  Spartans  formed 
a  project  of  restoring  Hippias  as  tyrannus  at  Athens,  and 
invited  their  allies  to  send  envoys  to  discuss  the  proposed 

1  Herodotus,  5.  74,  75.  2  Ibid.,  5.  74. 


chap,  vii.]  KLEISTHENES  65 

enterprise  and  decide  whether  they  would  take  part  in  it. 
Sosikles,  envoy  from  Corinth,  spoke  plainly  against  the 
attempt,  and  the  enterprise  was  abandoned.1  Hence  it  is 
clear  that  over  some  at  least  of  their  Peloponnesian  allies 
the  Spartans  possessed  only  a  vague  kind  of  predominance, 
such  as  the  Greeks  called  Hegemonia,  or  leadership.  Their 
hegemony  was  certainly  not  oppressive,  and  it  led  to  a 
wholesome  kind  of  intercourse  among  the  Peloponnesian 
peoples  for  the  settlement  of  their  foreign  policy. 

The  interventions  of  Kleomenes  in  Attica  did  more  to 
strengthen  the  people  which  he  wished  to  injure  than  any- 
thing: that  had  occurred   in  its  history.     They 

&  ...         Kleisthenes. 

called  forth  in  it  patriotic  action,  brought  rich 

and  poor  into  union,  and  led  directly  to  the  establishment 
of  the  constitution  of  Kleisthenes.  To  see  how  this  took 
place  we  must  go  back  to  510  B.C.  when  Hippias  was  ex- 
pelled. After  the  tyrant  was  gone  part  of  the  Athenians 
adhered  to  Isagoras  and  part  to  Kleisthenes.  Isagoras  had 
been  a  friend  of  Hippias,  and  it  is  likely  that  he  now  hoped 
to  gain  a  tyrannis  for  himself.  Kleisthenes  belonged  to  the 
great  house  of  the  Alkmseonidse,  and  had  himself  been 
the  most  active  of  the  opponents  of  Hippias :  when  Hippias 
was  gone,  he  may  probably  have  wished  at  first  to  ensure 
exclusive  enjoyment  of  power  for  the  Alkmseonidse  and  the 
other  Eupatridse ;  but,  when  he  saw  that  he  was  too  weak  to 
contend  with  Isagoras  without  the  help  of  the  poorer 
citizens,  he  made  friends  with  them,  and  thus  became 
leader  both  of  the  rich  families  and  of  the  common  folk.  In 
508  B.C.  it  was  Isagoras  who  invited  the  two  fresh  inter- 
ventions of  Kleomenes,  and  thus  exposed  Attica  to  invasion 
on  three  sides  at  once.  Against  Isagoras  and  Kleomenes 
Kleisthenes  stood  forward  as  the  leader  of  rich  and  poor 
alike,  and  as  the  champion  of  the  independence  of  Attica  ; 

1  Herodotus,  5.  91-93. 
E 


66  CONSTITUTION  OF  [chap.  vit. 

and  he  won  the  victory.  When  the  victory  was  won,  the 
first  task  of  Kleisthenes  and  the  Athenians  was  to  make 
themselves  safe  from  the  Boeotians  and  Chalkidians :  they 
defeated  the  Boeotians,  and  deprived  the  Chalkidians  of  the 
rich  Lelantine  plain,  on  which  they  established  a  Kleruchia, 
or  body  of  squatting  landowners,  consisting  of  four  thousand 
Athenian  citizens.  When  this  was  done  Kleisthenes  was 
entrusted  by  his  fellow  countrymen  with  the  work  of  making 
a  constitution. 

The  Attic  body  politic  for  which  Kleisthenes  had  to  devise 
a  constitution  was  less  markedly  composite,  or,  in  other 
The  Attic  words,  more  nearly  united  than  the  body  politic 
body  politic  0f  its  fathers  forty  years  earlier.  Before  the  advent 
more  nearly  of*  Peisistratus  to  the  chief  power  the  Plain,  the 
united  than      gea  cliff",  and  the  Highland  region  had  acted  each 

the  body  ,       .       ,f6  .     ft 

politic  forty  separately  for  itself :  now  in  508  B.C.  there  were 
years  earlier.  onjv  two  components  in  the  body  politic,  namely, 
the  townsmen  who  lived  in  the  city  and  in  the  adjacent 
plain,  and  the  country  folk  of  the  outlying  districts.  The 
country  folk  did  not  act  as  a  separate  unit,  but  their 
presence  in  large  numbers  must  be  noticed  because  it  differ- 
entiated the  body  politic  from  a  merely  urban  community. 
It  was  not  till  431,  when  the  country  folk  were  compelled 
to  move  into  the  city,  that  the  Attic  body  politic  became 
purely  urban. 

The  men  who  had  helped  Kleisthenes  against  Isagoras 
and  Kleomenes  were  rich  and  poor  alike :  therefore  it  was 
_.  certain  that  when  Kleisthenes  was  called  on  to 

The  con- 
stitution of      make  a  new  constitution  both  the  rich  and  the 

poor  would  have  their  portions  of  political  power. 

The  constitution  of  Solon,  which  had  not  gone  entirely  out 

of  use  except  probably  during  the  four  years  of  the  severe 

tyranny  of  Hippias,  was   ready  to  hand   and  suitable  for 

adoption:   so  Kleisthenes  took  it  as  his  model.     But  the 


chap,  vil]  KLEISTHENES  67 

four  recent  invasions  proved  that  Attica  needed  a  strong 
army  of  citizens  led  by  capable  commanders;  and  Kleis- 
thenes  in  making  his  constitution  supplied  what  was 
wanted.  He  wished  to  enlarge  the  body  of  citizens  by 
enrolling  among  them  men  resident  in  the  country  but  not 
of  pure  Attic  descent,  and  also  to  provide  a  good  method  of 
electing  military  commanders.  The  four  Attic  tribes  stood 
in  the  way  of  the  admission  of  new  citizens,  since  they  were 
close  hereditary  corporations  and  would  admit  no  new 
members  except  by  right  of  birth.  Kleisthenes  deprived 
the  four  tribes  of  all  political  significance,  and  in  their 
stead  set  up  ten  new  tribes  defined  not  according  to  birth 
but  by  locality. 

The  new  tribes  were  the  foundation  of  the  system  of 
government.  In  order  to  make  them  Kleisthenes  took  as 
the  smallest  units  in  the  population  the  demes  New  local 
or  townships  into  which  Attica  was  divided.  He  tribes, 
recognised  a  hundred  demes,  giving  about  ten  to  each  of  his 
tribes ;  and  as  he  remembered  that  strife  between  the  Plain, 
the  Sea  Cliff,  and  the  Highlands  had  been  dangerous,  he 
took  care  that  each  tribe  should  contain  some  demes  from 
the  Plain  near  Athens,  some  from  the  Sea  Cliff,  and  some 
from  the  inland  parts.  His  desire  to  guard  against  local 
dissensions  was  one  of  his  reasons  for  not  taking  the  four 
old  Attic  tribes  as  political  divisions  of  the  people ;  for  those 
old  tribes  were  in  some  way,  which  is  not  explained,  arranged 
in  a  manner  which  did  not  permit  of  a  mingling  of 
ingredients  from  the  Plain,  the  Sea  Cliff,  and  the  inland 
parts  in  each  political  unit.  His  chief  object  in  making  the 
new  tribes  was  to  get  a  good  army  of  citizens :  and  accord- 
ingly it  was  arranged  that  each  of  the  ten  tribes  should 
furnish  a  quota  of  fighting  men,  and  should  elect  a  general 
called  Strategus  as  its  commander.1 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol.,  21,  22  ;  Herodotus,  5.  69. 


68  CONSTITUTION  OF  [chap.  vii. 

In  nearly  all  matters  other  than  the  recruiting  and 
command  of  the  armed  forces  Kleisthenes  followed  very 
Organs  of  closely  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  Solon.  The 
government,  council  of  the  Areopagus  remained  as  Solon 
had  left  it,  and  consisted  of  all  men  who  had  served  or 
were  serving  the  office  of  archon.  The  election  and 
number  of  the  archons  remained  unchanged;  the  popular 
law  courts  may  possibly  have  been  made  more  numerous, 
and  the  assembly  of  the  whole  body  of  citizens  was  certainly 
intended  to  become  more  active,  for  Kleisthenes  arranged 
that  it  should  come  together  at  least  ten  times  in  every 
year.  As  the  assembly  was  an  unwieldy  body,  Solon  had 
provided  it  with  a  council  of  four  hundred  to  prepare  the 
business  for  its  consideration:  Kleisthenes  increased  the 
number  of  this  council  or  committee  to  five  hundred,  fifty 
being  taken  from  each  of  his  new  tribes;  and  it  was 
arranged  that  the  fifty  committee  men  for  a  tribe  should  be 
Prytaneis,  or  presiding  officers,  at  meetings  both  of  the 
committee  and  of  the  general  assembly  for  a  tenth  part  of 
the  year:  the  tenth  part  of  a  year  during  which  a  tribe 
presided  was  called  a  Prytaneia.1  Some  modifications  were 
introduced  in  the  system  of  local  government  in  Attica : 
demes  took  the  place  of  naukrarise,  and  demarchs  of 
naukrari.2 

But   though   Kleisthenes   imitated   Solon   so   closely   in 

many  of  the  provisions  of  his  constitution,  he  introduced 

one  innovation  to  provide  against  a  danger  which 

Ostracism.  .  .  ml  .-      , 

might  occasionally  arise.  Ine  strire  between 
Kleisthenes  and  Isagoras  had  been  mischievous :  it  had  led 
to  intervention  by  a  foreign  power,  and  it  might  have  led  to 
the  establishment  of  a  tyrannis.     To  guard  against  trouble 

1  The  existence  of  Prytaneia  in  the  Kleisthencan  constitution  is  authentic- 
ated by  Plutarch,  Symposiaca  Problemala,  1.  10. 

2  Arist.,,4<7i.  Pol.,  21. 


chap,  vil]  KLEISTHENES  69 

from  similar  contests  Kleisthenes  devised  the  process  of 
Ostracism,  or  vote  by  the  potsherds:  the  effect  of  his 
provisions  about  Ostracism  was  to  enable  the  assembly  to 
decide  by  voting  with  potsherds  that  one  of  the  contending 
heads  of  parties  should  depart  from  Attica  for  ten  years, 
without  detriment  to  his  status  or  property.1  The  practice 
of  Ostracism  was  found  useful  in  several  Greek  cities,  and 
was  adopted  at  Argos,  Miletus,  and  Megara.2 

The  need  felt  in  Attica  of  a  strong  army  led  very  natur- 
ally to  a  government  satisfactory  both  to  the  rich  and  to 
the  poor:  it  was  not  perhaps  a  difficult  matter 
to  satisfy  both  these  classes,  because  the  ^J^on" 
paternal  despotic  government  of  Peisistratus  strategi  and 
must  have  tended  to  depress  the  wealthy  and 
to  help  the  poor.  But  the  need  of  an  efficient  army 
led  to  a  result  quite  as  important  as  a  fair  distribution 
of  power  between  rich  and  poor :  it  led  to  division  of  power 
between  the  skilled  and  the  unskilled.  The  strategi  were 
at  the  head  of  the  armed  forces,  the  archons  other  than  the 
Polemarch  managed  the  civil  government:  both  sets  of 
officers  were  skilled  in  their  departments.  It  is  probable 
that  the  strategi  had  the  higher  degree  of  skill  and  experi- 
ence: any  man  could  be  re-elected  as  strategus  year  after 
year,  but  when  a  man  had  become  an  archon  he  passed  into 
the  council  of  the  Areopagus,  and  we  do  not  hear  of  any 
instance  in  which  a  man  who  had  become  an  Areopagite 
was  a  candidate  for  the  archonship.  The  strategi  soon 
overshadowed  the  archons ;  but  an  archon  also  might  have 
important  work  to  do,  as  is  seen  from  the  fact  that  Themist- 
okles  during  his  year  as  chief  archon  (493-2  B.C.)  began 
the  Avork  of  making  the  port  of  the  Peiraieus.3 

1  Plutarch,  Aristeides,  7.     Philochorus,  796,  quoted  at  length  by  Sandys, 
Ath.  Pol.,  22,  §  1,  note. 

2  Smith,  Diet.  Ant.,  '  Exsilium,'  vol.  !,  p.  819. 

3  Thucydides,  1.  93. 


70  AREOPAGUS  [chap.  vii. 

What  would    be    the    part    played    by   the    Areopagus 

remained  uncertain.    As  it  was  composed  of  men  of  some 

experience  in  public  work,  it  provokes  compari- 

Areopagus.  .  . 

son  with  the  Roman  Senate  and  with  the  Great 
Council  and  the  other  Councils  of  the  Venetian  Republic. 
But  the  Roman  Senate  and  the  Venetian  Councils  existed  as 
effective  organs  of  government  only  because  there  was  work 
to  be  done  which  could  not  be  performed  except  by  a 
standing  council  composed  of  men  of  experience  in  govern- 
ment. The  Roman  Senate  first  gained  its  authority  because 
it  was  needed  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  Latin  League 
and  the  Hernicans  faithful  to  their  alliance  with  Rome :  it 
rose  to  its  highest  degree  of  influence  when  it  was  needed 
for  the  work  of  managing  the  Latins,  the  Samnites,  and  the 
other  Italian  peoples  after  they  became  dependent  on 
Rome.  The  Venetian  Councils  in  like  manner  were  needed 
for  the  work  of  controlling  and  protecting  the  Venetian 
trading  stations  in  the  Levant,  for  ruling  foreign  de- 
pendencies first  in  Dalmatia  and  then  in  many  parts  of  the 
Balkan  Peninsula,  and  frequently  also  in  forming  alliances 
between  the  Venetian  Republic  and  foreign  powers.  The 
people  of  Attica  in  the  time  of  Kleisthenes  had  no  allies 
except  the  Platasans,  who  were  certain  to  be  faithful  allies, 
because  they  dreaded  the  Thebans:  and  they  had  no  de- 
pendencies except  four  thousand  settlers  on  the  Chalkidian 
Plain,1  separated  from  Attica  only  by  the  narrow  channel  of 
the  Euripus.  As  the  Athenians  had  practically  no  foreign 
policy,  and  therefore  no  need  of  a  council  of  skilled  advisers 
to  conduct  it,  Kleisthenes  never  thought  of  giving  them 
one :  if  he  had,  he  would  have  included  in  the  Areopagus 
all  men  who  had  been  strategi,  since  they  were  generally 
men  of  higher  qualifications  than  the  men  who  had  been 
archons.     It  is  clear  that  Kleisthenes  kept  the  Areopagus 

1  See  page  66. 


chap,  vil]  INNOVATIONS  AT  SPAETA  71 

only  because  it  was  a  part  of  the  old  government  of  Athens, 
which  he  as  an  Alkinaeonid  admired,  and  because  he  could 
not  abolish  it  without  giving  offence  to  the  men  of  dis- 
tinguished social  position  who  were  accustomed  to  be 
members  of  it.  What  its  functions  were  to  be  we  are  not 
told :  but  probably  it  had  a  veto  on  new  legislation,  and 
certainly  it  exercised  a  general  censorship  of  morals. 

The  constitution  of  Kleisthenes  gave  the  Athenians  a 
government  under  which  all  classes  were  contented  and 
ready  to  exert  themselves  for  the  common  weal. 
The  result  was  that,  within  twenty  years  after  constitution, 
the  expulsion  of  Hippias,  Athens  was  as  strong  510 BC-- 
as  Sparta;  and  this  result  was  due  in  a  great 
measure  at  least  to  the  reckless  meddling  of  Kleomenes. 
The  reign  of  Kleomenes  produced  some  change  also  in  the 
distribution  of  power  within  the  Spartan  commonwealth : 
till  near  the  end  of  his  life  Kleomenes  was  allowed  to  have 
the  sole  management  of  Spartan  foreign  policy,  and  was 
more  powerful  than  any  earlier  Spartan  king  known  to 
history.  In  his  later  years,  however,  he  committed  the 
conspicuous  folly  of  contriving  the  deposition  of  his 
colleague  Demaratus,  and  the  substitution  for  him  of 
Leotychides :  this  proceeding,  together  with  the  subsequent 
madness  of  Kleomenes,  lowered  the  dignity  of  the  kingly 
office.  Soon  after  the  death  of  Kleomenes  in  491  B.C.,  the 
ephors  assumed  the  control  of  foreign  affairs  as  well  as 
home  government ;  and  in  479  B.C.  they  acted  on  their  own 
authority  in  sending  out  the  great  Spartan  army  which 
defeated  the  Persians  at  Plataea.  From  479  B.C.  onwards  to 
the  end  of  Spartan  history  the  ephors  had  the  complete 
control  of  all  departments  of  government  except  during  the 
long  reign  of  the  capable  King  Agesilaus. 

My  description  of  the  constitution  of  Kleisthenes  and  of 
changes  in  the  distribution  of  power  among  the  different 


72  THE  GREEKS  AND  [chap.  vii. 

organs  in  the  Spartan  government  has  been  in  the  nature 
of  a  digression,  though  it  has  been  concerned  with 
„  ;  important  matters.     I  now  return  to  the  thread 

Return  r 

from  a  of   my   story   and   speak   of    the   second   event 

digression.  wj1jcj1  proved  to  the  Greek  states  outside  the 
Peloponnesus  that  their  territories  were  not  impregnable, 
namely,  the  conflict  between  the  Greeks  and  the  Persians. 

The  first  of  the  Greeks  who  came  into  contact  with  the 

Persians  were  those  in  Asia  Minor.     When  Cyrus,  King  of 

Persia,  had  in  546  B.C.  overpowered  Croesus,  King 

between  the     of    Lydia,   and    annexed   his    kingdom    to   the 

Asiatic  Persian    dominions,    he    sent    an    army    under 

Greeks  and  J 

the  Persians  Harpagus  to  reduce  the  Greek  cities  which  had 
been  tributary  to  Croesus.  For  forty  years  the 
cities  on  the  mainland  of  Asia  Minor  could  do  nothing  but 
submit  to  their  Persian  suzerains;  but  shortly  before 
500  B.C.,  when  Dareius,  King  of  Persia,  had  weakened  him- 
self in  a  foolish  and  futile  expedition  through  Thrace  and 
Scythia,  they  tried  to  recover  their  independence,  and  asked 
aid  from  their  kinsmen  in  Europe. 

The  Spartans  refused  to  send  help  to  the  Asiatic  Greeks  : 
the  Athenians,  who,  since  they  had  repelled  four  Lacedae- 
Contact  monian  invasions  of  their  country,  had  become 

in  Asia  audacious,  sent  twenty  ships,  and  their  example 

European       was   f°U°wed  by  the   Eretrians,  who   sent  five. 
Greeks  and     The  arrival  in  Asia  of  the  twenty  five  ships  from 

Persians  «■ 

Europe  brought  European  Greek  peoples  for  the 
first  time  into  contact  with  the  Persians.  The  crews  of  the 
ships  joined  with  the  Ionian  Greeks  in  a  march  to  Sardis, 
the  capital  of  the  important  Persian  satrapy  of  Lydia,  which 
ended  in  the  capture  and  burning  of  all  the  town  except  its 
precipitous  citadel.  Soon  after  the  burning  of  Sardis,  the 
Greeks  who  had  taken  it  were  defeated  by  the  Persians  near 
Ephesus,  and  the  Athenians,  seeing  probably  that  nothing 


chap,  vil]  THE  PERSIANS  73 

further  could  be  accomplished,  sailed  back  to  Attica.1  After 
their  departure  the  navy  of  the  Ionians  achieved  some 
successes ;  but  in  494  B.C.,  for  want  of  union  among  the 
Ionian  cities  and  of  discipline  in  their  contingents  of  ships, 
it  was  decisively  defeated  near  the  island  of  Lade,  close  to 
Miletus,  by  a  Phoenician  fleet  in  the  service  of  Dareius.  The 
revolt  ended  in  complete  failure,  and  in  suppressing  it 
Dareius  became  stronger  than  he  had  been :  before  it  broke 
out  the  Greeks  under  his  suzerainty  had  been  those  of  the 
Asiatic  mainland  and  Mytilene  in  the  isle  of  Lesbos ;  after 
its  failure  he  acquired  Chios  and  Tenedos,  Byzantium,  and 
the  Greek  cities  on  the  Propontis  and  the  Thracian 
Chersonesus,  and  his  fleet  dominated  the  iEgean  Sea.  But 
the  most  importaut  result  of  the  revolt  was  the  desire  which 
it  aroused  in  the  mind  of  Dareius  to  punish  the  Athenians 
and  the  Eretrians  for  their  interference,  and  to  subjugate 
the  Greeks  of  the  European  continent. 

In   492   Dareius   sent  a  strong  army  under   Mardonius 
across  the  Bosporus  with  instructions   to   march  through 
Thrace  and  Macedonia  and  enter  Hellas  from   contact  in 
the  north,  and  a  fleet  to  move  in  concert  with   Europe 

,  ,    ,  .  ..  .  .  between  the 

the  army  and  keep  it  supplied  with  provisions.    European 

The  army  advanced  as  far  as  Macedonia,  but   Greeks  and 

tiic  Persians 

off  the  promontory  of  Mount  Athos  the  fleet  492  b.c- 
was  badly  damaged  in  a  storm,  and  Mardonius  49°  BC' 
went  home  without  having  touched  Hellas  properly  so 
called.2  In  490  Dareius  gathered  a  much  smaller  force 
merely  suited  to  the  limited  task  of  punishing  the  Eretrians 
and  the  Athenians.  The  soldiers  were  embarked  on  trans- 
port ships  in  Cilicia,  under  command  of  Datis,  and  rowed 
themselves  along  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  as  far  as  Samos, 
and  thence  straight  across  the  iEgean  Sea.3    Datis  reduced 

1  Herodotus,  5.  99-102. 

9  Ibid.,  6.  43-7.  » Ibid, ,  6.  94,  95. 


74  MARATHON  [chap.  vn. 

Naxos,  captured  Eretria  and  took  the  inhabitants  prisoners, 
and  thence  advancing  to  Attica  set  his  army  ashore  at 
Marathon.  The  Athenians  had  asked  aid  of  Sparta;  but 
the  Spartans  had  not  yet  perceived  that  against  the  Persians 
it  would  be  prudent  for  them  to  co-operate  with  the 
Athenians.  They  did  not  care  what  ills  befell  a  people 
outside  of  the  Peloponnesus,  and,  though  they  promised  to 
send  a  contingent,  they  waited  for  good  luck  till  the  full 
moon,  and  were  too  late : *  the  Platseans  alone  of  the  Greek 
peoples  fought  alongside  of  the  Athenians. 

The  Athenian  army  was  commanded  by  the  ten  Strategi, 
among  whom  the  ablest  was  Miltiades,  who  had  been 
Battle  of  tyrant  of  the  Thracian  Chersonesus,  and  by  the 
Marathon,  archon  Polemarch.  Miltiades  only  succeeded  in 
getting  a  battle  fought  at  Marathon  by  persuad- 
ing the  Polemarch  to  vote  for  that  course.  The  Greek 
army  and  the  Persians  were  not  very  unequal  in  numbers : 
their  fronts  were  of  the  same  length,  but  the  Athenian  line 
was  weak  in  the  middle.  The  day  ended  in  a  complete 
victory  for  the  Athenians  and  Platseans,  and  in  the  departure 
of  the  Persians  for  Asia.2 

After  the  Persians  were  gone,  it  is  plain  that  the 
Athenians  were  troubled  with  dissensions  between  parties 
Change  and  leaders  of  parties :  for  between  487  and  484 

Athenian  ^ey  thrice  made  use  of  the  vote  by  the  pot- 
constitution  :  sherds  to  banish  important  citizens  whose  political 
takeiTby  activity  they  deemed  dangerous.3  It  was  prob- 
lot,  487  B.C.  ably  from  a  desire  to  avoid  mischievous  rivalries 
between    leaders    of    parties    that    they    also    made    an 

1  Herodotus,  6.  106.  s  Ibid.,  C.  109-113. 

s  See  E.  Meyer,  Oeschichte  des  Alterthums,  vol.  3,  §  198.  The  men  banished 
were  Hipparchus,  closely  connected  with  the  expelled  tyrant  Hippias  ; 
Megakles  the  Alkmaeonid  ;  and  Xanthippus,  brother-in-law  of  Megakles,  and 
father  of  Perikles.  They  were  recalled  in  480  {Ath.  Pol.,  22.  8),  and  in 
479  Xanthippus  was  strategus  (Herodotus,  9.  114). 


chap,  vii.]  INNOVATION  AT  ATHENS  75 

important  change  in  their  constitution.  Hitherto  the 
archons  had  been  elected  by  direct  vote  of  the  citizens,  and 
influence  with  the  voters  was  the  means  by  which  men  rose 
to  the  chief  civilian  office  in  the  city.  In  487  it  was 
decided  that  henceforth  a  large  number  of  candidates 
for  the  archonship  should  be  selected  by  the  demes  from 
among  the  Pentakosiomedimni  and  the  Hippeis,  and  out 
of  this  number  the  nine  archons  should  be  taken  by 
drawing  lots.1 

After  it  had  been  settled  that  the  archons  were  to  be 
taken  by  chance,  the  Athenian  commonwealth  had  no 
civilian  officers  who  were  chosen  for  their  merits,  Effects 
and  therefore  in  all  matters  that  were  not  naval  of  the 
or  military  or  concerned  with  foreign  policy  the  on  the 
assembly  had  no  advisers  possessing  skill  or  Areopagus, 
experience.  As  the  archons  were  no  longer  qualified  for 
performing  important  work,  the  executive  business  of 
government  gradually  dropped  out  of  their  hands  and 
was  undertaken  by  the  committee  of  five  hundred.  No 
archon  henceforth  had  any  political  significance,  and  no 
action  done  by  an  archon  was  worthy  of  being  recorded 
by  historians.  The  senate  of  the  Areopagus  which  con- 
sisted of  exarchons  was  in  time  lowered  in  character  by 
the  change  in  the  position  of  the  archons.  Till  487, 
since  the  archons  were  chosen  for  their  merits,  there 
had  been  a  chance,  though  only  a  small  chance,  that 
the  Areopagus  might  become  a  senate  of  skilled  advisers 
on  questions  of  foreign  policy:  after  its  members  were 
nobodies  that  small  chance  was  annihilated.  Only  for 
ten  or  fifteen  years  a  majority  of  its  members  were 
men  who  had  been  elected  as  archons  because  of  their 
ability:  after  they  had  sunk  through  deaths  of  members 
and    had    become    a    minority,    the    Areopagus   could   no 

1  Ath.  Pol.,  22. 


76  THE  GREEK  [chap.  vii. 

longer  be  believed  to  be  capable  of  arriving  at  wise 
resolutions. 

The  exclusion  of  the  archons  from  all  important  work 
must  have  had  the  further  effect  of  increasing  the  responsi- 
0ne  bilities  of  the  strategi :  and  it  may  probably  have 

strategus  been  because  the  Athenians  saw  how  much  now 
the  other  depended  on  the  strategi  that  either  in  487  or  at 
nine:  date  some  later  date  they  made  a  change  in  the 
change  method  of  their  election.     Under  the  rules  laid 

uncertain.  down  by  Kleisthenes  each  of  the  ten  tribes 
elected  one  strategus  for  itself:  this  procedure  at  some  date 
which  cannot  be  determined  was  modified,  and  it  was 
ordered  that  only  nine  of  the  tribe  should  choose  a  strategus 
a  piece,  and  that  the  tenth  strategus  should  be  elected  b}* 
the  whole  Attic  people,  so  that  he  might  have  a  marked 
precedence  over  the  strategi  who  were  elected  by  the 
tribes.1 

More  important  than  even  the  changes  made  by  the 
Athenians  in  their  constitution  was  their  resolution  to 
Athenian  possess  a  strong  navy.  In  the  year  after  the 
navy-  defeat  of  the  Persians  at  Marathon,  Miltiades, 

the  victorious  general,  in  command  of  a  small  squadron  of 
ships  conquered  a  few  islands  near  Attica,  but  failed  in  an 
attempt  on  Paros.1  In  488  the  Athenians,  probably  acting 
on  the  advice  of  Themistokles,  resolved  to  wage  a  war 
against  the  island  of  iEgina  which  had  a  stronger  navy  than 
any  other  Greek  state.  At  the  outset  they  may  probably 
have  had  only  forty  eight  ships  as  in  the  days  of  the 
naukrarise:  certainly  they  were  quite  unable  to  cope  with 
the  iEginetan  fleet  till  Themistokles,  in  the  archonship  of 

1  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  vol.  3,  §  201,  and  notes  thereto. 
Dr.  Meyer  expresses  the  opinions,  which  seem  well  grounded,  that  there  was 
a  chief  strategus  as  early  as  481  B.C.,  and  that  Themistokles  was  then  chief 
strategus. 

2  Herodotus,  6.  132-6. 


chap,  vit.]  POWEES,  480  B.C.  77 

Nikodemus,  probably  483-2  B.C.,  induced  them  to  order  that 
the  profits  of  the  silver  mines  of  Laurium,  instead  of  being 
distributed  among  the  citizens,  should  be  employed  in 
building  a  hundred  new  ships.1  The  addition  to  the  fleet 
enabled  the  Athenians  in  481  B.C.  to  defeat  the  iEginetans, 
and  gave  them,  as  Themistokles  intended  it  should  give 
them,  a  powerful  weapon  to  use  in  the  following  year,  when 
Xerxes,  son  of  Dareius,  invaded  Europe  with  the  purpose  of 
subjugating  all  the  Greek  peoples. 

On  the  eve  of  the  coming  of  Xerxes  to  Europe  it  is  worth 
while   to   take  a  survey  of  the  Greek  powers.     Voluntary 
alliances  for  defence  of  territory  were  entirely  TheQreek 
unknown   to   them,  with  the  exception  of  one   powers, 

d8o  B  C 

which  had  been  established  in  519  B.C.  between 
Athens  and  Plataea.  The  only  alliance  formed  under  com- 
pulsion was  that  which  existed  among  several  peoples  in  the 
Peloponnesus  under  the  hegemony  of  Sparta.  The  rest  of 
the  Greek  peoples  were  about  three  score  maritime  and 
commercial  urban  peoples  accustomed  to  live  in  political 
isolation  and  in  distrust  of  one  another. 

Of  the  invasion  of  Greece  by  the  Persian  host  and  of  its 
repulse  it  is  needless  to  say  anything  but  that  the  numbers 
of  the  invaders  have  been  very  grossly  exagger- 
ated in  the  narrative  of  Herodotus,  and  that  to   against 
the  Athenians   belongs   the  glory  of  defeating  ^rxes'  B  r 
them.     As  Xerxes  had  to  march  by  a  narrow 
track   from   the   Hellespont   to   Macedonia,   his   army   can 
hardly   have    numbered  more   than   a   hundred    thousand 
men.2     On  the  Athenians  first  of  the  Hellenes  fell  the  full 
force  of  the  attack ;  and  all  the  Greeks  in  the  Peloponnesus, 
fancying  themselves  secure  behind  their  isthmus,  were  only 
half-hearted   in   lending  them  aid.     The  people  of  Argos 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol,  22.  7. 

8  Beloch,  Oriech,  Gesch.,  1.  368. 


78  WAR  AGAINST  [chap.  vii. 

would  do  nothing.1  The  Spartans  sent  only  three  hundred 
of  their  best  warriors,  the  Spartiatse,  to  Thermopylae,  and 
only  gathered  seven  thousand  in  all  of  their  Perioeki  and 
allies  to  guard  the  mountains  behind  the  pass :  if  they  had 
used  all  the  troops  that  were  not  absolutely  necessary  for 
keeping  down  the  Helots,  they  might  have  spared  trust- 
worthy men  to  hold  the  path  by  which  their  position  was 
attacked  in  the  rear.  The  Athenians  were  not  in  the  least 
to  blame  for  not  sending  soldiers  to  Thermopylae,  because 
their  men  were  better  employed  in  serving  on  board 
ship. 

Even  after  the  Athenians  and  the  iEginetans  had  defeated 
the  Persian  navy  at  Salamis,  the  Spartans  and  their  allies 
_    .  hesitated  whether   they  would   do   anything  to 

Tardy  co-  J  . 

operation  help  the  Athenians  against  the  Persian  land 
Spartans  force  under  Mardonius  until  it  was  pointed  out 
with  the  to  them  that  the  Athenians,  unless  they  were 
rescued  by  land,  would  be  compelled  to  submit  to 
the  Persians,  and  the  Persians  would  be  able  to  use  the 
Athenian  ships  for  transporting  their  army  into  the  Pelopon- 
nesus. It  was  only  after  they  saw  that  they  must  help  the 
Athenians  or  be  themselves  destroyed  that  they  consented 
to  co-operate  with  them  in  resistance  to  the  Persians. 
When,  however,  they  saw  the  necessity  of  acting  for  their 
own  preservation,  they  acted  vigorously.  By  land  the 
ephors  equipped  by  far  the  largest  army  that  ever  went  out 
of  Lacedsemonia,  and  by  sea  they  sent  out  a  small  squadron 
to  act  with  the  Athenian  ships.  The  land  force  commanded 
by  Pausanias,  cousin  and  guardian  of  a  king  of  Sparta  who 
was  a  minor,  marched  into  Bceotia,  and  won  the  battle  of 
Plataea,  which  drove  the  Persians  out  of  Europe :  and  the 
combined  fleets  of  the  European  Greeks,  commanded  by 
Leotychides,  King  of  Sparta,  and  by  Xanthippus,  one  of 

1  Herodotus,  7.  148-9. 


chap,  vil]  XEKXES  79 

the  Athenian  strategi,  father  of  Perikles,  rowed  across  to 
Asia,  found  the  remnant  of  the  Persian  fleet  drawn  up  on 
the  shore  of  the  promontory  of  Mykale,  between  Miletus  and 
Ephesus,  and  guarded  by  a  land  force  in  a  fortified  camp : 
they  put  their  men  ashore  and  burned  both  the  ships  and 
the  camp.1 

1  Herodotus,  8.  131,  9.  90-106. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

COMMENTS  ON  THE  GREEK  URBAN  PEOPLES, 

650  B.c-480  B.C. 

Throughout  the  period  from  650  B.C.  to  480  B.C.  the 
Greek  urban  peoples  exhibit  a  combination  of  characteristics 
that  is  not  found  again  in  any  other  group  of 
peoples  un-  peoples.  Almost  every  one  of  them  had  its 
interruptedly    territory    fenced    around   with    strong    natural 

independent,  .  ° 

bulwarks ;  every  one  of  them  except  Sparta  was 
further  provided  with  the  artificial  defence  of  strong  walls. 
In  consequence  of  these  two  characteristics  every  one  of  the 
urban  peoples  kept  its  independence  complete  throughout 
the  period,  and  there  were  only  three  instances  in  which 
territory  was  transferred  from  one  urban  people  to  another. 
Beyond  this  the  urban  peoples  very  rarely  fought  against 
one  another  by  land,  and  therefore  nearly  every  one  of  them 

was  certain  that  it  would  not  suffer  an  invasion 

and 

politically  of  its  territory.  As  invasion  was  known  to  be 
isolated,  m0st  improbable,  alliances  for  defence  were  not 
needed.  The  general  result  was  that  each  people  had  no 
dreaded  enemies  and  no  valued  friends,  or,  in  other  words, 
each  city  was  politically  isolated. 

And  yet  more.  Each  people  lived  in  a  home  whose 
physical  environment  was  so  marked  that  the  inhabitants 
were  guided  in  the  choice  of  their  pursuits  by  that  en- 
vironment, and  did  not  try  to  contend  against  its  guidance. 
Physical  environment  does  not  change :  the  peoples  suffered 

80 


chap,  viii.]  GREEK  CITIES  TO  480  B.C.  81 

no  interference  from  their  neighbours ;  and  so  in  each  city 
the  pursuits   of  the  inhabitants   remained  almost  entirely 
free  from    perceptible   change    throughout   the  _ 
period.      Whatever    was    the   character  of   the   from  change 
community  inhabiting  a  given  territory  in  650   ^suits 
B.C.,  that  character  was  transmitted  without  per-   of  their 
ceptible  change  to  the  community  that  followed 
in  the  same  territory  a  generation  later,  and  so  on  through 
the    generations    until    the    time    when    Xerxes    invaded 
Europe. 

Almost  every  people,  wherever  it  may  live,  is  a 
family,  in  whose  pedigree  the  generations  are  either  bodies 
politic  with  a  government  of  their  own,  or  com-  pedi&rees  or 
munities  subject  to  a  government  imposed  on  successions 
them  from  outside :  in  the  Greek  peoples  every  urban  bodies 
generation  was  a  body  politic  with  a  government  Politic- 
of  its  own.  In  consequence  of  the  immunity  of  the  Greek 
urban  peoples  between  650  B.C.  and  480  B.C.  from  transfers 
of  territory,  and  of  the  persistence  of  their  inhabitants  in 
the  pursuits  of  their  predecessors,  each  generation  of  each 
people  was  much  like  the  one  before  it  and  much  like  the 
one  after  it :  thus  their  pedigrees  were  monotonous,  and 
the  bodies  politic  that  occur  in  each  pedigree  or  succession 
were  all  of  one  type.  Hence  it  is  easy  to  classify  the 
pedigrees  or  successions  of  bodies  politic  of  the  Greek  towns 
of  the  period  before  us,  indicating  what  was  the  type  of 
body  politic  in  each  succession,  and  also  stating  from  what 
has  been  explained  in  the  preceding  chapters  what  was 
the  kind  of  government  that  belonged  to  each  type  of 
body  politic. 

The  cities  and  groups  of  cities  existing  in  European 
Hellas  and  its  adjacent  islands  in  650  B.C.  are  divided  into 
two  main  classes  by  differences  in  their  situations  and 
surroundings.     The    two    groups    are   these.      First,   about 

F 


82  GREEK  CITIES  [chap.  viii. 

three  score  maritime  cities,  provided  with  strong  natural 
bulwarks  towards  the  land  side,  and  therefore  exempt  from 
ci  *fi  f  waging  wars  by  land.  The  pedigree  of  the 
of  Greek  bodies  politic  in  each  of  these  cities  was  a 
nearly  uniform  succession  of  simple  city  com- 
munities, maritime  and  commercial,  never  fighting  by  land. 
Second,  four  terrestrial  cities  or  groups  of  cities,  not  pro- 
vided with  natural  defences  immediately  outside  their  walls, 
but  possessing  some  appreciable  amount  of  rural  territory  or 
country  towns  which  might  be  disobedient  to  the  main 
city,  and  also  feeling  the  need  sometimes  of  waging  a  war 
with  some  city  entirely  outside  their  natural  boundaries. 
The  first  of  the  four  was  Sparta:  its  pedigree  of  bodies 
politic  from  650  to  480  was  a  succession  of  garisons  of  slave 
masters.  The  second  was  a  group  of  towns  in  Bceotia,  joined 
in  a  federation :  the  Boeotian  pedigree  was  a  succession  of 
federal  bodies  politic.  The  third  was  in  Argolis,  which  had 
a  chief  city,  and,  till  after  480,  had  also  other  towns.  The 
Argives  fought  often  with  the  Spartans,  and  their  bodies 
politic  in  the  various  generations  were  composite  and  fre- 
quently belligerent.  The  fourth  terrestrial  city  was  in 
Attica,  which  contained  a  chief  city,  Athens,  and  also  other 
towns.  The  people  of  Attica  rarely  needed  to  fight  outside 
of  their  natural  boundaries,  and  they  had  no  alliances : 
hence  they  consisted  from  650  to  480  of  a  succession  of  com- 
posite bodies,  usually  non-belligerent.  The  governments  of 
the  Greek  cities  from  650  to  480  are  already  known  to  my 
readers ;  so  I  may  proceed  at  once  to  draw  up  a  tabular 
view  of  Greek  urban  bodies  politic  from  650  to  480  and  of 
their  governments. 


CHAP.  VIII.] 


GKEEK  CITIES 


83 


GREEK   URBAN  BODIES  POLITIC,   650  B.C.-480  B.C., 
AND  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS. 


Bodies  Politic. 


Governments. 


Group  1. — In  about  sixty  mari- 
time cities,  with  strong 
frontiers  towards  the  land, 
and  not  having  appreciable 
territory  outside  their  Avails. 

In   each    city   a    succession    of    Class  governments : 

simple  urban  communities,  Rule  of  the  rich  (Oligarchia),  or 
maritime  and  commercial,  not  Rule  of  a  usurper  (Tyrannis),  or 
fighting  by  land.  Rule  of  the  poor  (Demokratia). 

Best  examples  Corinth,  Megara, 
Naxos. 


Group  2. — In  four  terrestrial 
cities  or  groups  of  cities  : 

(1)  In  Sparta. 

A  succession  of  garrisons  of 
slave  masters. 


(2)  In  Bceotia,  which  contained 
several  towns  in  federation. 

A  succession  of  federal  bodies 
politic. 


Many  organs  of  government,  all 
insignificant.  Rigid  custom 
and  discipline  in  lieu  of 
government. 


Common  government  for  matters 
of  common  interest :  and  a 
separate  government  tor  each 
town  for  other  matters. 


84  CONCLUSIONS  [chap.  viii. 

GREEK  URBAN   BODIES  POLITIC,    650  B.C. -480   B.C.,   AND 
their  governments. — Continued. 

Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

(3)  In  Argolis,  which  had  a  chief 
city  and  other  towns. 

A   succession   of  composite   ur-    A  king  with  a  little  power,  and 
ban    bodies    politic,    fighting        a  strong  council, 
frequently  on  the  land. 

(4)  In  Attica,  which  had  a  chief 
city  and  other  towns. 

A  succession  of  composite  bodies  At  one  time  mild  oligarchia ;  at 
politic,  very  seldom  fighting  another  mild  tyrannis ;  at 
by  land,  and  having  no  others  mixed  government  con- 
alliances,  sisting  of — 

(1)  Yearly  magistrates. 

(2)  A  senate  (Areopagus)  steadily 
growing  weaker. 

(3)  Assembly. 

(4)  Popular  law  courts. 

Now  we  have  to  see  what  facts  the  classification  enables 
us  to  express.     In  the  classification  the  bodies  politic  com- 

munities  are  described  by  qualities  quite  distinct 
of  the  classi-    from  their  governments — that  is  to  say,  by  their 

non-governmental  attributes.  But  each  class  of 
body  politic  had  a  kind  of  government  belonging  to  itself. 
Thus  in  the  period  from  650  B.C.  to  480  B.C.,  when  the  non- 
governmental attributes  of  a  body  politic  are  known,  the 
character  of  its  government  is  known  also.  Hence  it  is 
clear  that  there  was  some  relation  of  cause  and  effect  con- 
necting non-governmental  attributes  and  forms  of  govern- 
ment in  the  bodies  politic.  But  we  can  gather  from  what 
has  been  said  in  the  preceding  chapters  that  the  non- 
governmental attributes  of  a  body  politic  were  neither  the 


chap,  viil]  CONCLUSIONS  85 

direct  cause  nor  the  direct  effect  of  its  form  of  government. 
Hence  we  must  conclude  that  non -governmental  attributes 
and  forms  of  government  were  both  determined  in  each 
body  politic  by  some  common  causes.  In  the  case  of  the 
urban  bodies  politic  of  the  Greeks  those  causes  were  physical 
and  human  environment :  they  determined  the  non-govern- 
mental attributes  of  the  bodies  politic  by  very  direct  pro- 
cesses, and  they  determined  the  forms  of  their  governments 
through  much  more  indirect  influences.  It  is  no  doubt  to 
be  admitted  that  in  each  body  politic  both  non-govern- 
mental and  governmental  attributes  were  largely  determined 
by  tradition  and  by  following  in  the  footsteps  of  ancestors. 
But  that  does  not  invalidate  what  I  have  just  said.  The 
bodies  politic  could  not  have  followed  tradition  and  the 
practices  of  ancestors  if  they  had  not  been  enabled  to  do 
so  by  unchanged  physical  and  human  environment. 


CHAPTER   IX 

HEGEMONIES   IN   GREECE   DURING  THE   WAR   AGAINST 
PERSIA,  477   B.C-454   B.C. 

From  the  success  of  Xerxes  in  leading  his  array  into  Attica 
the  Greeks  of  Hellas  learned  that  Mount  (Eta  by  itself 
afforded  them  no  adequate  protection :  as  soon,  however,  as 
their  victory  over  the  Persian  fleet  at  Salamis  gave  them 
command  of  the  near  sea,  the  invasion  of  the  dry  land  lost 
half  its  terrors,  and  when  at  Mykale  they  gained  the  mastery 
in  all  the  seas,  between  Europe  and  Asia  they  were  for  the 
moment  safe.  But  they  could  not  continue  to  be  safe  unless 
they  kept  that  full  command  of  the  sea  which  they  had  just 
won :  and  they  could  not  be  sure  of  keeping  it,  unless  they 
were  aided  by  the  maritime  Greek  cities  of  the  ^Egean  Sea. 
Hence  they  eagerly  desired  support  from  those  cities.  The 
maritime  cities  demanded  as  the  price  of  their  support 
protection  against  the  Persians.  The  European  Greeks  were 
willing  to  pay  that  price ;  and  it  was  thereupon  agreed  that 
the  Greeks  of  Hellas  and  of  the  ^Egean  Sea  would  co-operate 
for  the  purpose  of  keeping  or  making  all  of  them  free  from 
the  domination  of  the  Persians. 

Immediately  after  the  battle  of  Mykale  had  been  won, 

Chios,  Samos,  and  Mytilene  were  accepted  as 
Athens  over  allies  by  the  victorious  commanders  Leoty- 
the  maritime    cnides   and   Xanthippus.     Leotychides   and  his 

Peloponnesian  squadron  went  home,  but  Xan- 
thippus   with    the    Athenian    ships    remained    near    Asia 

86 


chap,  ix.]  HEGEMONY  OF  ATHENS  87 

Minor,  and  was  joined  by  vessels  from  many  cities  of  Ionia 
and  the  Hellespont.  During  the  winter  of  479-8  he  and 
his  new  adherents  captured  Sestos,  the  point  at  which 
the  army  of  Xerxes  had  made  an  easy  entry  into  Europe : 
this  done,  they  dispersed  to  their  several  cities.1  In  the 
spring  of  478  the  Spartans  sent  out  twenty  ships  under 
Pausanias,  the  Athenians  sent  thirty,  and  the  combined  fleet 
of  fifty  was  joined  by  many  more  from  the  small  maritime 
cities.  Pausanias,  partly  because  the  Spartans,  over  whom 
he  was  deputy  king,  were  regarded  as  the  leading  Greek 
people,  and  partly  because  he  had  been  general  of  the 
united  Greek  army  at  Platsea,  was  allowed  to  assume  the 
chief  command.  But  his  arrogance  and  insolence  disgusted 
the  captains  and  crews  of  the  ships  from  the  maritime  cities 
of  the  iEgean  Sea,  and  they  requested  the  Athenians  to  take 
over  the  hegemony  or  leadership  in  the  maritime  war.  The 
Spartans  themselves  were  angry  with  Pausanias :  they  did 
not  care  to  be  leaders  in  a  naval  war  which  they  did  not 
understand  how  to  manage,  and  thus  they  made  no  re- 
monstrance when  in  477  the  Athenians  assumed  a  hegemony 
of  the  maritime  Greek  cities.2 

If    the    maritime   cities  of    the    ^Egean   Sea    had   been 
accustomed  to  making  alliances  for  defence,  and  had  not 
been  mere  isolated  atoms,  they  might  probably 
have   succeeded    in    obtaining  from    Athens    a  maritime 
compact  such   as  would   make   them  severally   cities  defi°ed 

by  Athens, 

secure  in  the  enjoyment  of  independence:  as 
it  was,  they  gave  the  Athenians  a  hegemony  without 
any  bargain  to  settle  what  should  be  the  future  relations 
between  the  leaders  and  the  led.  The  Athenians  alone 
determined  what  those  relations  should  be.  For  the 
time  being,  since  they  sincerely  dreaded  the  Persians,  and 
therefore  desired  that   the  maritime  cities  might  support 

1  Thucydides,  1.  89,  2.  2  Ibid.,  94,  95. 


88  HEGEMONY  OF  ATHENS  [chap.  ix. 

theui  willingly,  they  made  arrangements  which  seemed 
satisfactory  to  everybody.  They  decided  which  of  the  cities 
should  contribute  money  and  which  should  supply  ships. 
They  established  a  board  of  Athenian  officers  called 
Hellenotamise,  or  treasurers  of  the  Hellenes,  to  receive  the 
contributions  in  money.  The  amount  of  the  contributions 
for  each  year  was  fixed  at  four  hundred  and  sixty  talents, 
about  equal  in  weight  of  silver  to  a  hundred  and  fifteen 
thousand  pounds.  The  treasure  was  to  be  kept  at  Delos, 
and  meetings  of  delegates  from  the  contributory  cities  were 
to  be  held  in  the  temple  of  the  Delian  Apollo.1  It  was 
understood  from  the  use  of  the  word  hegemony  that  the 
Athenians  were  to  direct  the  operations  of  the  fleet  and  to 
appoint  its  commanders. 

The  arrangements  made  by  the  Athenians  in  477  for  the 
conduct  of  their  hegemony  bear  a  superficial  resemblance 
and  not  by  to  those  that  have  been  made  in  modern  times 
the  maritime  at  the  formation  of  confederations  j  and  accord- 
ingly modern  writers  generally  say  that  in  477 
a  Confederation  or  League  of  Delos  was  established. 
But  if  we  look  at  the  proceedings  that  have  established 
modern  confederations,  and  at  those  in  which  temporary 
regulations  were  made  for  the  management  of  the  Athenian 
hegemony,  we  shall  see  that  the  resemblance  between  them 
is  only  superficial.  Among  good  examples  of  modern  con- 
federations are  that  which  in  1579  founded  the  United 
Dutch  Provinces,  and  that  which  in  1777  first  constituted 
the  United  States  of  America.  In  each  of  these  con- 
federations the  contracting  communities  were  approximately 
equal  in  power,  the  terms  of  the  confederation  were  settled 
in  a  contract  made  by  bargaining  between  the  communities, 
and   the  communities  lived  in  districts   adjacent  to   each 

1  My  statement  of  the  :*r range raents  is  taken  direct  from  Thucydides, 
1.  96. 


chap,  ix.]  HEGEMONY  OF  SPAETA  89 

other  on  the  dry  land,  so  that  it  was  easy  for  them  to  have 

a  common  government.     In  the  Athenian  hegemony  there 

was  no  equality  of  power  between  the  leaders  and  the  led, 

since  Athens  was  stronger   than  all   the  other  cities  put 

together;  there  were  no  terms  settled   by  bargaining,  but 

simply  arrangements  prescribed  by  the  leading  power  and 

alterable  by  it,  and   the  communities  being  separated  by 

the  sea  could  not  have  a  common  government.     It  seems 

to  me  that  to  speak  of  the  Confederation  of  Delos  is  to 

use   a   misleading   term,   and   that  it  is   better   to   speak, 

as    the    Greeks  spoke,   simply   of    the    hegemony  of    the 

Athenians.    There  is  no  doubt  that  the  maritime  cities  of 

the  JEgean  Sea  by  giving  Athens  the  hegemony,  in  fact, 

though  possibly  without  knowing  it,  forfeited   their  own 

independence. 

By  the  end  of  the  year  477  there  were  two  hegemonies  in 

Greece :  one  of  the  Athenians  over  the  maritime  cities  of  the 

./Egean  Sea,  the  other  of  the  Spartans  over  many 

terrestrial  powers  in  the  Peloponnesus.     In  the   hegemonies 

course  of  the  next  twenty  two  years  the  Athenians   in  Greece> 

.  .  477  B.C. 

were  easily  successful  in  keeping  the  iEgean  Sea 

clear  of  the  Persian  fleets.     After  477  the  Persians  could  not 

sail  on  those  waters,  and  on  the  one  occasion,  somewhere 

about  466,  when  they  ordered  a  Phoenician  fleet  to  approach 

them,  it  was  defeated  before  reaching  them,  on  the  river 

Eurymedon  in  Pamphylia,  on  the  southern  coast  of  Asia 

Minor.1     In  the  same  twenty  two  years  the  Spartans  had 

the  utmost  difficulty  in  maintaining  their  predominance  in 

the  Peloponnesus.     Their  king  Leotychides  was  incompetent, 

and  in  469,  when  he  had  led  an  army  into  Thessaly,  was 

convicted  of  accepting  a  bribe  from  the  enemy :  their  deputy 

king  Pausanias  was  a  traitor,  living  for  about  five  years  from 

477  at  Byzantium,  and  afterwards  for  about  three  more  at 

1  Thucydidea,  1.  100. 


90  RIVALRIES  [chap.  ix. 

Kolonse  in  the  Troad,  and  hatching  plots  against  his  own 
country.  In  the  Peloponnesus  the  peoples  of  Tegea  and 
Arcadia  opposed  them  in  arms;1  and  lastly,  in  464,  the 
bravest  of  their  Helots  revolted,  and  fortifying  themselves 
on  Mount  Ithome  in  Messenia,  defied  their  masters  in  open 
rebellion.  In  462  the  Spartans  underwent  the  humiliation 
of  applying  to  their  old  rivals,  the  Athenians,  for  a  con- 
tingent to  aid  them  in  reducing  their  serfs  on  Mount 
Ithome. 

Although  the  Spartans  till  462  kept  up  the  show  of  an 
alliance  with  the  Athenians,  they  had  long  been  alarmed  at 
„.    ,  their  rapid  successes,  and,  when  the  Athenian 

Rivalry  and  ... 

war  between   contingent    arrived    in    Lacedaemonia    to    help 

the  two  them  against   their  revolted   Helots,  they  COn- 

hegemonies,  °  J 

462  B.C.-  ceived  a  groundless  suspicion  that  it  would 
45  '  '  betray  them  and  help  their  enemies.  Under  the 
influence  of  this  suspicion  they  sent  it  back,  saying  only 
that  they  no  longer  needed  its  services.  The  Athenians 
replied  to  the  insult  by  gaining  alliances  with  the  Argives 
and  the  Megarians,  who  had  been  hitherto  in  alliance  with 
the  Spartans,  and  by  assuming  an  attitude  towards  their 
neighbours  the  Boeotians,  which  indicated  that  they  might 
attack  them.  At  the  end  of  457  the  Spartans  ventured  to 
march  out  into  Bceotia,  and  with  the  aid  of  their  Boeotian 
allies  they  defeated  an  Athenian  army  at  Tanagra,  but  were 
unable  to  remain  in  Bceotia.  After  the  departure  of  the 
Spartans,  the  Athenians  at  the  beginning  of  456  defeated 
the  Boeotians  at  (Enophyta,  and  reduced  Boeotia  under  their 
power.  In  the  same  year  the  Athenians  also  completed  the 
long  walls  connecting  their  city  with  its  ports  of  Peiraieus 
and  Phalerum,  and  conquered  the  iEginetans,  whom  they 
had  nearly  conquered  in  481  but  had  left  in  enjoyment  of 

1  For  Tegea  and  Arcadia  see  Herodotus,  9.  35 :  for  further  evidence 
E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  d.  Alterth.,  vol.  3,  §  285,  and  note. 


chap,  tx.]  INNOVATION  AT  ATHENS  91 

their  independence,  because  they  needed  their  help  for  the 
coming  naval  war  against  Xerxes.1  Thus  in  456  Athens 
rose  to  the  greatest  power  that  it  ever  attained.  If  its 
citizens  had  had  any  acquaintance  with  that  part  of  foreign 
policy  which  consists  in  conciliating  neighbours  who  may  be 
made  into  useful  helpers,  they  would  have  treated  Bceotia 
and  Megara  with  the  utmost  generosity,  and  so  gained 
influence  on  the  Hellenic  mainland.  But  conciliation  of 
neighbours  was  utterly  unknown  to  the  inhabitants  of  all 
the  Greek  commercial  cities,  and  among  them  to  the 
Athenians. 

In  the  course  of  the  twenty-three  years  from  477  to  the 
end  of  455  during  which  some  important  operations  against 
the    Persians  were  undertaken,   the  Athenians 

,       ,  ,  ,  ,     .  .  t     Change  in 

both  made  a  change  in  their  constitution  and  the  Athenian 
gradually  altered  their  methods  of  dealing  with  constitution, 
the  maritime  cities  under  their  hegemony.  It 
has  been  pointed  out  already  that,  when  in  487  they 
decided  that  the  archons  should  be  appointed  by  drawing 
lots,  they  made  it  certain  that  within  a  few  years  the 
Areopagus  would  become  unfit  for  the  discharge  of  im- 
portant public  duties.2  It  happened,  however,  that  in  480, 
when  the  Athenians  were  compelled  to  flee  from  their 
country  before  the  coming  invasion  of  Xerxes,  the  Areopagus 
rendered  a  great  service  to  their  countrymen  by  finding 
some  money  to  pay  those  citizens  who  were  willing  to  serve 
on  board  the  ships  5  and  the  assembly  in  recognition  of  this 
useful  action  allowed  it  for  seventeen  years  to  have  the  chief 
influence  in  the  government.3  But  the  great  power  of  the 
Areopagus  became  an  absurdity,  because  its  members  were 
no  wiser  than  other  Athenians;  and  in  462  Ephialtes, 
supported  by  Perikles,  who  now  appears  for  the  first  time  in 

1  Thucydides,  1.  107,  108.  2  See  p.  74. 

3  Ath.  Pol.,  23. 


92  ALTEEED  NATUEE  OF  THE  [chap.  ix. 

history,  proposed  and  carried  in  the  assembly  a  law  which 
deprived  it  of  all  its  political  prerogatives.  Soon  after  the 
new  law  was  carried  Ephialtes  was  murdered,  probably  at 
the  instigation  of  some  of  the  Areopagites.  After  the 
change  was  made,  the  government  of  Athens  possessed  only 
three  organs :  first,  the  general  assembly ;  second,  the  five 
hundred,  which  was  only  a  committee  of  the  assembly 
taken  by  lot;  and  third,  the  strategi,  among  whom  one 
probably  by  this  time  enjoyed  a  markedly  preponderant 
position. 

Between  477  and  455  the  Athenians  got  rid  of  their  fear 
of  the  Persians  and  were  free  to  alter  their  behaviour  towards 
_.  the   maritime  cities.     When   Naxos   about  467 

Changes 

in  the  refused  to  send  its  quota  of  ships,  they  seized 

ofathegemen  ^e  island  for  their  own  use,  and  either  then  or 
Athenian  afterwards  planted  on  it  five  hundred  of  their 
ony'  own  citizens  as  Kleruchi.1  In  460  they  showed 
that  they  regarded  the  contributions  paid  by  the  cities  as 
their  own  property  by  employing  them  for  the  equipment 
and  maintenance  of  a  great  fleet  of  two  hundred  triremes, 
which  they  sent  on  an  expedition  to  Egypt  by  which  they 
alone  were  likely  to  profit.  For  the  next  six  years  they 
spent  probably  the  whole  of  the  contributions  on  their 
Egyptian  enterprise :  at  the  end  of  those  years  their  ships 
in  Egypt  were  all  captured  by  the  Persians,  and  nearly  all 
the  men  who  had  sailed  in  them  were  killed.2  In  the 
following  year  454,  since  it  was  possible  that  the  Persians 
might  be  able  to  send  a  fleet  into  the  iEgean  Sea,  they 
moved  the  treasury,  in  which  the  accumulated  contributions 
were  kept,  from  Delos  for  greater  security  to  Athens : 
thenceforth  they  ceased  to  summon  meetings  of  delegates 
from  the  cities,  and  regarded  the  contributions  as  a  tribute 

1  Thucydides,  1.  98;  Pausanias,  1.  27.  6. 
8  Thucydides,  1.  104,  109,  110. 


chap,  ix.]  ATHENIAN  HEGEMONY  93 

paid  to  them  to  be  used  as  they  thought  fit.1  Thenceforth 
there  was  only  one  year,  449  B.C.,  in  which  they  undertook 
any  enterprise  against  the  Persians.  The  action  of  the 
Athenians  in  seizing  the  contributions  broke  no  compact, 
for  no  compact  had  been  made.  It  was  not  even  impolitic 
according  to  Greek  notions  of  policy,  for  the  maritime  cities 
of  the  ^Egean  Sea  were  never  able  to  punish  it.  But  it  pre- 
vented for  ever  the  growth  of  any  friendly  feelings  towards 
the  Athenians  in  the  minds  of  the  men  who  in  477  had 
chosen  them  as  their  leaders.  It  converted  the  lesser 
maritime  cities  from  contributors  into  tributaries;  and 
it  changed  the  relation  of  Athens  to  the  other  cities 
from  vague  hegemony  to  clearly  marked  domination  or 
ascendency. 

The  names  of  the  men  who  advised  the  Athenians  to 
adopt  a  threatening  attitude  towards  Sparta  and  Boeotia  in 
462,  and  to  use  the  contributions  of  the  maritime 
cities  for  their  war  in  Egypt  and  afterwards  to   0f  perikies, 
assume  entire  possession  of  them  for  their  own  *6z  B,c" 
purposes,  have  not  been  recorded :  very  possibly 
no  one  in  Athens  doubted  that  the  appropriation  of  the 
contribution     was     advantageous.      But    we     know     from 
evidence  that  will  be  stated  in  the  next  chapter  that  from 
461  the  chief  adviser  of  the  Athenian  assembly  was  Perikies : 2 
he,  then,  must  have  the  largest  share  of  the  credit  or  the 
blame   for    the  actions   of  the   assembly   after  that   date. 
When  the  appropriation  of  the  funds  had  been  completed 
it  was  Perikies  who  was  entrusted  by  the  Athenians  with 

1  The  date  of  the  appropriation  of  the  treasure  and  the  tribute  by  Athens 
is  fixed  by  an  inscription  which  states  that  the  thirty-fourth  year  of  a 
certain  payment  from  the  tribute  to  the  goddess  Athena  was  421  B.C.,  when 
Aristion  was  archon.  Therefore  454  was  the  first  year  in  which  the 
payment  was  made. — Corp.  Inscr.  Alt.,  1.  260;  Hill,  Sources  of  Gr.  Hist., 
ch.  1,  105. 

2  See  p.  !)S. 


94  PEEIKLES  [chap.  ix. 

the  chief  voice  in  determining  how  the  money  should  be 
spent : x  by  gladly  undertaking  the  work  he  showed  that  he 
heartily  concurred  in  the  policy  of  exacting  the  tribute 
from  the  maritime  cities.  The  extremely  unwise  action 
adopted  by  the  Athenians  in  462,  when  they  threatened 
Boeotia  and  Sparta,  was  certainly  not  the  work  of  Kimon, 
who  steadily  advocated  friendship  with  Sparta ;  and  there 
is  no  other  Athenian  to  whose  advice  it  can  be  attributed 
except  Perikles,  or  else  Ephialtes  and  Perikles  acting  in 
conjunction. 

1  Plutarch,  PeriHes,  ch.  11-14. 


CHAPTER  X 

ATHENS   IN   RECEIPT  OF  TRIBUTE,   454   B.C. -413   B.C. 

The  position  and  character  of  the  Athenian  people  in  454  B.C. 
and  for  the  next  twenty  years  were  in  many  respects  unique. 
They  can  be  described  under  three  heads:  (1)  the  relations 
of  Athens  to  its  tributary  cities ;  (2)  the  relations  of  Athens 
to  the  other  Greek  powers ;  (3)  the  Athenian  government. 

The  important  facts  in   the  dealings  of  Athens  with  its 
tributary  cities  are  these.     Firstly,  each  tributary  city  was 
governed  by   citizens   of  its   own   and    not  by  «*  The 
Athenians.    Secondly,  the  Athenians  sometimes   relations  of 

...  .  ..  .  Athens  to 

sent  an  Athenian  garrison  to  a  tributary  city  to  its  tributary 
keep  it  intimidated.  Thirdly,  in  some  cases  the  cities- 
Athenians  left  the  citizens  of  a  tributary  city  to  choose  their 
own  constitution ;  in  others  they  imposed  on  it  a  constitution 
of  their  own  designing.  Fourthly,  some  kinds  of  trials  and 
suits  arising  in  tributary  cities  were  not  decided  on  the  spot, 
but  were  carried  to  Athens  to  be  judged  by  a  dikasterion. 

The  first  two  of  the  assertions  just  made  scarcely  call  for 
comment,  since  evidence  of  their  truth  is  scattered  broad- 
cast in  the  works  of  Greek  historians  and  orators :    Native 
it  is  only  necessary  to  observe  on  the  first  of  govern- 

mcnts  * 

them  that  the  only  Athenian  civilian  officers  ever  Athenian 
sent  to  a  tributary  city  were  Episkopi  j  and  we  £arrisons. 
shall  see  shortly  that  Episkopi  were  merely  commissioners 
sent  out  for  a  temporary  purpose  and  were  not  permanent 
officials. 

06 


96  CONSTITUTIONS  OF  THE  [chap.  x. 

The    constitutions  of   the    tributary   cities    are    seldom 

mentioned;    but  we   know    that    Mytilene    till    428    was 

governed    by    an    oligarchy   of    its    own    rich 

Constitutions      .  .  ,  ,  ,  ,  .   , 

of  the  citizens : x  and  as  that  was  a  government  wnicn 

tributary  tfie  Athenians  would  never  think  of  establishing, 
it  must  have  been  of  native  growth.  Our  only 
knowledge  of  a  constitution  imposed  by  the  Athenians 
on  a  tributary  city  comes  from  a  stone  which  was 
formerly  at  Athens,  but  is  now  lost.2  On  that  stone 
was  inscribed  the  text  of  a  constitution  for  the  tributary 
city  of  Erythrse,  the  most  considerable  place  on  the  pro- 
montory of  Mimas  in  Asia  Minor,  opposite  to  the  isle  of 
Chios.  The  Athenians,  wishing  to  settle  how  Erythrse 
should  be  governed,  sent  out  some  commissioners  called 
Episkopi  and  a  garrison:  the  commissioners  and  the 
commander  of  the  garrison  made  a  draft  of  a  constitution 
which  was  converted  into  a  law  by  the  assembly  at  Athens. 
The  Erythrseans  were  to  be  governed  by  a  council  consisting 
of  a  hundred  and  twenty  of  their  own  citizens  appointed  by 
drawing  lots.  On  the  first  occasion  the  lots  were  to  be 
drawn  by  the  Episkopi  and  the  commander  of  the  garrison ; 
on  subsequent  occasions  by  the  commander  of  the  garrison 
alone,  whence  it  is  clear  that  the  commission  of  the 
Episkopi  would  have  expired.  It  went  without  saying 
that  the  Athenian  officers  or  officer  who  drew  the  lots 
possessed  the  right  of  rejecting  any  candidate  at  pleasure. 
Thus  the  method  of  appointment  ensured  that  the  council 
consisted  exclusively  of  men  whom  the  Athenian  officers 
believed  to  be  willing  to  act  in  the  interests  of  Athens  rather 
than  of  Erythrse.  It  is  probable  that  the  hundred  and  twenty 
councillors  who  governed  Erythrse  were  mainly  drawn  from 
its  poorer  citizens,  and  that  the  constitution  of  Erythrse  was 

]  Thucydides,  3.  27.  2. 

-  Corp.  Inscr.  AtL,  1.  9  ;  G.  F.  Hill,  Sources  of  Gr.  Hist.,  p.  27. 


chap,  x.]  TRIBUTARY  CITIES  97 

for  that  reason  deemed  by  the  Athenians  to  be  a  demokratia. 
Isokrates  in  his  Panegyricus,  composed  in  380,  says  that  the 
Athenians  had  been  wont  to  set  up  demokratise  in  the  cities 
dependent  on  them.1  They  could  not  well  set  up  genuine 
demokratise,  since  the  first  desire  of  a  real  demokratia,  in 
which  all  the  poor  citizens  met  in  an  assembly,  would  be 
to  cease  paying  tribute,  but  it  is  quite  likely  that,  when 
they  gave  exclusive  power  to  a  select  body  of  citizens,  they 
might,  if  those  citizens  were  poor,  call  the  resulting  govern- 
ment a  demokratia,  because  it  excluded  the  rich  from  any 
share  of  influence. 

The  jurisdiction  of  the  Athenian  dikasteria  over  cases 
arising  in   the   tributary  cities  was  defined  separately  for 
each   tributary  city  in  a  document  which   was  jurisdiction 
called  a  compact  {arvfiftoXov),  though  its  terms   du^stlri1*" 
were  simply  dictated  by  the  Athenians.     Hence  over  cases 
the  definition  of  the  trials  and  suits  that  must  ^b^ary1 
be  judged  in  Athens  was  not  the  same  for  every   cities, 
tributary  city.2    For  all,  however,  of  the  tributary  cities  alike 
it  was  laid  down  that  accusations  of  treason  against  Athens 
must  be  brought  before  an  Athenian  dikasterion,  and  also 
all  commercial  suits  other  than  those  in  which  the  litigants 
were  both   members  of  the  same  tributary  city.     Further 
extensions   of  the    Athenian  jurisdiction    were   separately 
defined   for    individual   tributary  states   in    the  compacts 
which  the  Athenians  imposed  on  them.2 

The  relations  of  Athens  to  its  tributary  cities  may  be 
summed  up  by  saying  that  a  citizen  of  a  tributary  city  was 
a  subject  of  his  own  city,  and  was  not  subject  to 

.  Summary. 

Athens  unless  he  were  a  party  to  a  suit  or  trial 
which  had  to  be  heard  in  Athens:   and  Athens  only  con- 
trolled  the  governments   of  the  tributary  cities,  but  did 

1  Isokrates,  Panegyr.,  104-106. 

2  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  d.  Alterth.,  3.  273  note. 

G 


98  ATHENS  AND  THE  GREEK  POWERS        [chap.  x. 

not  govern  their  inhabitants:  in  other  words  Athens  was 
only  suzerain  but  not  sovereign  over  the  tributary  cities. 
The  Athenians  were  a  separate  community,  and  the 
tributary  cities  were  separate  though  not  independent: 
and,  when  the  Athenians  established  and  intensified  their 
control  over  the  lesser  maritime  cities,  they  did  not  add  to 
the  size  of  their  territory  or  the  number  of  the  subjects 
under  their  government:  afterwards,  as  before,  the  com- 
munity that  constituted  the  Athenian  body  politic  consisted 
only  of  the  inhabitants  of  Attica  and  the  settlers  in  the 
Kleruchise. 

Athens,  ever  since  it  controlled  nearly  the  whole  naval 
force  of  the  Greeks,  and  conquered  Bceotia,  and  enriched 
itself  by  appropriating  the  moneys  contributed 
of  Athens  by  the  maritime  cities,  was  to  the  terrestrial 
independent  Powers  an  object  of  dread  mingled  with  hatred. 
Greek  The  greater  part  of  the  peoples  in  the  Pelopon- 

pc"  nesus  and  the  subjugated  Boeotians  were  looking 

for  an  opportunity  of  making  a  coalition  to  diminish  the 
power  of  their  threatening  neighbour,  and  the  Athenians 
knew  that  they  might  at  any  time  be  opposed  by  the  com- 
bined efforts  of  nearly  all  the  peoples  in  terrestrial  Hellas. 

As  the  Athenians  were  in  danger  of  attack  they  needed 
to  be  led  by  one  man,  and  the  man  whom  they  chose  to 
(3)  Govern-  leao-  tnem  was  Perikles.  The  advent  of  Perikles 
ment  of  to  the  first  place  at  Athens  must  date  from  about 

A.  th  pus 

461  B.C.-  461,  not  long  after  Ephialtes  was  murdered:  for 
429  B.C.  khen  a  y0fce  yfith  potsherds  was  taken  which 
cannot  have  been  designed  for  any  other  purpose  but  to 
decide  whether  Perikles  or  Kimon  should  go  into  exile. 
The  vote  went  against  Kimon  and  he  departed,  leaving 
Perikles  without  a  rival.  In  457  Kimon  asked  leave  to 
return  in  order  to  fight  in  the  battle  of  Tanagra,  but  did 
not  obtain  it.     His  friends,  carrying  his  armour  as  a  standard, 


chap,  x.]  PEEIKLES  99 

took  part  in  the  fight,  and  a  hundred  of  them  were  slain.  Soon 
afterwards  Kimon  himself,  on  the  proposal  of  Perikles,  was 
recalled,1  and  till  his  death  in  449  acted  in  harmony  with 
Perikles.  After  449  Perikles  was  for  the  remaining  twenty 
years  of  his  life  almost  unchallenged  in  his  influence  over 
the  Athenians.  From  about  461,  for  more  than  thirty  years 
the  two  important  organs  in  the  Athenian  government  were 
the  general  assembly  and  Perikles:  and,  as  the  assembly 
accepted  the  measures  that  Perikles  proposed,  Perikles  was 
the  moving  force  in  the  government.  At  some  times 
Perikles  was  only  the  chief  administrator  of  the  funds 
produced  by  the  tribute :  for  fifteen  years  continuously, 
probably  from  445  to  430,  he  was  elected  by  the  whole 
Attic  people  to  be  chief  of  the  strategi. 

The  use  to  be  made  of  the  tribute  was  determined  by 
Perikles  and  the  assembly  acting  together.  Part  of  it 
was  laid  up  as  a  provision  for  future  wars  against   _ 

ir  t-  o  Domestic 

the  tributary  states  or  the  terrestrial  powers:  policy  of 
part  was  spent  in  payments  to  poor  citizens  for  en  es" 
civilian  services :  part  to  the  navy  and  army :  the  remainder 
was  employed  in  beautifying  Athens  with  temples  and  statues. 
The  treasure  laid  by  for  war  amounted  at  one  time  in  the  life 
of  Perikles  to  nearly  ten  thousand  talents,  or  the  whole 
produce  of  the  tribute  for  fully  twenty  years:  hence  it  is 
clear  that  the  practice  in  most  years  was  to  store  up  more 
than  half  the  produce  of  the  tribute,  to  furnish  a  treasure 
for  war.  The  payments  to  poor  citizens  for  civilian  services 
were  made  to  dikasts,  to  members  of  the  five  hundred, 
and  almost  beyond  a  doubt  also  to  all  poor  citizens  who 
were  present  at  a  dramatic  performance  on  a  religious 
festival.2     These  payments  for  civilian  services  must  have 

1  Plutarch,  Kimon,  17. 

2  Plutarch,  Perikles,  9.     dewpuci,  in  1.  5,  Beupiicois  in  1.  19  of  the  chapter  in 
the  text  edited  by  Sintenie,  and  published  by  Teubner. 


100  BEGINNING  OF  THE  [chap.  x. 

used  up  a  hundred  and  fifty  talents  annually,  or  a  third 
part  of  the  tribute  so  long  as  the  whole  tribute  had  not 
risen  above  four  hundred  and  sixty  talents :  they  certainly 
sufficed  to  ensure  for  Perikles  the  votes  of  the  poor  citizens 
who  predominated  in  the  ekklesia. 

After  the  Spartans  in  457  found  it  necessary,  although 
they  had  defeated  the  Athenians  at  Tanagra,  to  retire  out 
of  Boeotia,  a  state  of  war  without  active  hostilities 
policy  of  continued  between  them  and  the  Athenians  till 
Perikles,  456  452  or  possibly  till  450,  when  a  truce  was  made 
for  five  years.  When  in  446  and  445  Euboea, 
Bceotia,  and  Megara  all  revolted  from  Athens,  Pleistoanax, 
King  of  Sparta,  led  a  Peloponnesian  army  to  Eleusis  just 
within  the  western  frontier  of  Attica.  Perikles  saw  that 
Athens  was  no  longer  strong  enough  to  keep  control  over 
any  of  the  terrestrial  peoples,  and  he  made  a  peace  with 
Sparta  for  thirty  years,  renouncing  Bceotia  and  Megara  but 
keeping  EubcBa.  Henceforth  his  foreign  policy  remained 
steadily  settled  for  ten  years.  He  rigorously  enforced  the 
payment  of  the  tribute  except  when  he  took  lands  for 
Kleruchiae  in  lieu  of  it,  and  kept  up  a  very  efficient  navy 
of  moderate  size,  yet  powerful  enough  to  intimidate  the 
maritime  cities:  but  he  strove  to  avoid  all  occasions  of 
conflict  with  the  terrestrial  powers. 

The  desire  of  Perikles  to  avoid  war  with  his  neighbours 
on  the  land  was  not  fulfilled.  In  435  a  naval  war  arose 
War  between  Detween  Corinth  and  Kerkyra.  The  Athenians 
Athens  and  at  first  sent  a  small  squadron  of  ten  ships,  with 
Greeks:  halting  instructions  to  aid  the  Kerkyrseans  in 
431  B.C.  case  their  island  was  in  danger  of  a  hostile 
descent:1  eventually  they  gave  the  Kerkyrseans  an  un- 
disguised alliance.  The  powers  of  the  Peloponnesus  were 
alarmed  at  observing  the  addition  to  their  naval  force  which 

1  Thucydides,  1.  45, 


chap,  x.]  PELOPONNESIAN  WAR  101 

the  Athenians  gained  by  taking  the  Kerkyrseans  as  their 
allies:  and  in  the  beginning  of  431  the  terrestrial  powers 
and  the  Athenians  drifted  into  a  war  which  neither  side 
very  heartily  desired.  Thus  began  what  the  Athenians 
called  the  Peloponnesian  War. 

When  the  war  began,  Athens  was  helped  by  its  tributary 
cities  and  by  Chios  and  Lesbos,  which  still  furnished  ships 
under  compulsion:  its  only  voluntary  allies 
were  the  Platseans,  the  Kerkyrseans,  and  the  on  the  two 
greater  part  of  the  village  communities  in  S1  es* 
Akarnania.  The  members  of  the  coalition  opposed  to  Athens 
included  all  the  terrestrial  Hellenes  except  (1)  the  Platseans 
and  the  Akarnanians  who  were  on  the  side  of  Athens,  and 
(2)  the  peoples  of  Argolis  and  Achaia  who  stood  neutral.1 
The  extreme  poverty  of  the  Athenians  in  voluntary  allies 
shows  how  unlucky  it  was  for  them  that,  when  after  the 
battle  of  (Enophyta  they  had  a  chance  of  conciliating  the 
Boeotians  and  the  Megarians  by  generous  behaviour,  they 
showed  that  conciliation  of  neighbours  was  an  art  to  which 
they  were  strangers.  During  the  first  two  and  a  half  years 
of  the  war  the  coalition  was  stronger  by  land,  and  Athens 
gained  no  advantages  even  at  sea :  at  the  end  of  the  two  and 
a  half  years  Perikles  died,  and  henceforward  the  conduct  of 
the  war  was  undertaken  rather  by  the  assembly  of  the 
Athenian  citizens  than  by  any  single  statesman. 

Before  long  we  shall  have  to  consider  the  work  done  by 
the  assembly :   but  first  we  must  try  to  estimate  what  was 
the  number  of  the  citizens  who  might  meet  in 
assembly,  and  what  proportion  it  bore   to   the  population 
whole  population.     Thucydides  tells  us  that  on  ° 
the    outbreak    of    the    war   the    Athenians    had    thirteen 
thousand  hoplites  for  service  in  the  field,  besides  sixteen 
thousand  for  garrisons  of  fortresses  and  for  guarding  the 

1  Thucydides,  1.  9. 


102  POPULATION  OF  ATHENS  [chap.  x. 

Long  Walls.  The  sixteen  thousand  consisted  of  the  oldest 
men  and  the  youngest,  together  with  any  of  the  resident 
aliens  who  might  be  serving  among  the  heavy  armed  men. 
The  resident  aliens  are  mentioned  as  an  after  thought,  and 
as  if  they  were  not  a  large  part  of  the  sixteen  thousand.1 
If  we  set  them  down  as  three  thousand  we  shall  have 
twenty  six  thousand  citizens  serving  either  in  the  field  or 
behind  walls.  To  these  must  be  added  those  poor  citizens 
who  were  serving  as  oarsmen  or  in  the  crews  of  the  galleys  of 
war,  five  hundred  members  of  the  committee  of  the  ekklesia, 
six  thousand  dikastae,  and  may  be  about  three  or  four 
thousand  citizens  with  so  much  property  that  they  did  not 
care  to  earn  wages  from  the  public  treasury.  On  the  whole 
we  may  estimate  the  total  number  of  adult  male  citizens  at 
between  thirty  five  and  fifty  thousand,  and  the  citizens  with 
their  families  at  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  or 
two  hundred  thousand.  The  servile  population,  of  foreign 
extraction  and  usually  acquired  by  purchase,  furnished 
all  the  domestic  servants  both  male  and  female,  the  skilled 
handicraftsmen,  the  workers  in  the  silver  mines  of  Laurium, 
dancing  girls  and  harlots,  besides  those  employed  on  other 
occupations  for  which  smaller  numbers  were  required.  The 
slaves  cannot  be  reckoned  at  fewer  than  a  hundred 
thousand,  and  so  the  whole  population  of  Attica  must 
have  amounted  to  not  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  million, 
and  may  have  reached  three  hundred  thousand. 

Before  the  Peloponnesian  war  began,  the  greater  part  of 

the  Attic  population  had  been  wont  to  enjoy  life  in   the 

country:2    the   peasantry  lived   on   their  farms 

Thepopula-  .  -  ,      .  ....  .      , 

tion  of  Athens,  continuously,  and  the  rich  citizens  had  estates 
431  d'H'~        outside  the  city,  to  which  they  could  resort  when 

4x3  B.C. 

they  wished.     In  431  B.C.  Archidamus,  King  of 
Sparta,  invaded  Attica ;  and  the  Athenians,  by  the  advice  of 

1  Thucydides,  2.  13.  s  Ibid.,  2.  14. 


chap,  x.]  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  103 

Perikles  made  no  attempt  to  defend  their  territory  because 
they  could  not  do  it  without  crippling  the  navy,  which  was 
absolutely  necessary  both  for  attacks  on  the  enemy  and  for 
the  collection  of  the  tribute.  The  whole  population,  there- 
fore, was  compelled  to  move  into  the  city  of  Athens  or  into 
the  large  space  between  Athens,  the  Long  Walls,  and  the  sea. 
Invasions  and  devastations  of  Attica  occurred  in  all  the  first 
seven  years  of  the  war  except  the  third  and  the  sixth,  when 
Attica  was  so  infected  with  pestilence  that  the  enemies 
avoided  it.  The  invasions  were  made  in  the  spring  or  at 
harvest,  and  though  they  lasted  only  a  month  or  six  weeks 
were  effectual  in  destroying  the  crops,  the  fruit  trees,  and 
the  buildings  on  the  farms.  After  one  such  invasion  many 
of  the  peasantry  might  go  back  to  their  farms :  after  two  or 
three  they  were  likely  to  despair  of  getting  a  livelihood  from 
the  soil,  and  to  prefer  to  remain  in  the  city  where  they  could 
earn  something  with  little  trouble  from  the  state  treasury. 
Thus  for  the  first  seven  years  of  the  war,  and  no  doubt  for 
somewhat  longer,  Athens  had  to  house  both  the  townsfolk 
and  the  country  folk:  after  the  seventh  year  there  was  a 
respite  from  invasions,  and  by  the  year  413,  which  is  the 
last  that  is  considered  in  the  present  chapter,  we  may 
imagine  that  the  greater  part  of  the  rural  population  were 
re-established  on  their  farms. 

The  concentration  of  the  people,  free  and  slaves  alike, 
within  the  walls  during  the  first  eight  or  ten  years  of  the 
war  must  have  produced  new  economic  con- 
ditions.     The  rich  citizens  suffered  nothing  but   economic 
the  loss  of  their  country  residences :  if  they  were   con  * lons' 
manufacturers,    their    skilled    slaves    could    still    produce 
painted  vases  or  woven  fabrics:    if  they  had  ships,  their 
cargoes  could  go  to  foreign  lands  and  other  cargoes  could 
return :  if  they  were  professional  men,  their  earnings  were 
not  diminished.     But  the  peasants  and  their  families  were 


104  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  [chap.  x. 

reduced  to  poverty.  A  man  who  had  owned  a  small  farm 
or  had  worked  in  the  fields  for  wages  would  probably  now 
serve  as  a  hoplite  or  as  an  oarsman  or  a  dikast:  but  his 
wages  would  only  suffice  for  his  own  maintenance,  and 
would  not  keep  his  family.  The  wives  and  children  would 
be  compelled  to  ply  humble  retail  trades,  or  to  get  wages  for 
their  labour  in  any  employment  other  than  domestic  service  : 
that  was  too  degrading  for  any  one  of  free  birth,  because  it 
must  compel  him  to  associate  on  terms  of  equality  with 
slaves.  The  new  economic  conditions  had  a  powerful 
influence  in  determining  the  foreign  policy  of  Athens :  the 
men,  whether  they  served  in  the  army  or  on  board  ship  or 
in  the  dikasteria,  all  got  their  wages  from  the  tribute,  and 
therefore  the  poor  citizens  always  desired  to  vote  for  any 
management  of  the  war  which  might  increase  the  amount 
of  the  tribute  or  make  its  collection  more  secure.  The 
tribute  had,  before  the  beginning  of  the  Peloponnesian  war, 
risen  to  six  hundred  talents  yearly,1  and  we  can  account  for 
the  increase  of  its  amount  because  we  know  that  some  six 
or  eight  of  the  larger  maritime  cities,  which,  when  Athens 
acquired  its  hegemony,  had  furnished  ships,  had  since  then 
been  ordered  to  pay  money  in  lieu  of  them.  In  425  the 
assembly  approved  a  proposal  made  by  Kleon,  that  the  total 
amount  should  be  raised  to  twelve  hundred  talents.  The 
sum  demanded  was  more  than  could  be  extracted  from  the 
cities,  and  only  three  quarters  of  it  was  actually  paid  to  the 
treasurers  at  Athens.2 

In  the  Athenian  government  after  the  death  of  Perikles, 
the  active  organs  were  the  Assembly  of  the  citizens,  the 
committee  of  Five  Hundred,  the  Dikasteria,  and  the 
Strategi :  the  nine  Archons  also  existed,  but  their  functions 
were  of  little  importance.     The  Ekklesia  consisted  of  those 

1  Thucydides,  2.  13. 

2  Gilbert,  Griech.  Staatsalterth. ,  1.  399,  400. 


chap,  x.1  EKKL^SIA  105 

citizens  who  were  present  in  Athens  and  able  and  willing 
to  attend.  It  is  not  likely  that  any  large  part  of  those 
present  in  Athens  were  hindered  from  attendance 
by  the  need  of  working  for  a  livelihood,  since  the  the  Athenian 
poor  nearly  all  earned  wages  from  the  treasury :  j^^ff}^. 
nor  can  we  suppose  that  many  of  the  poor  were  its  com- 
voluntarily  absent,  since  they  took  pleasure  in 
exercising  political  influence.  Hence  probably  the  steadiest 
attendants  were  the  poor  who  remained  constantly  resident 
in  the  city.  We  may  set  down  these  steady  ekklesiasts 
at  about  six  or  eight  thousand:  six  thousand  was  the 
number  of  the  dikastse,  and  it  was  also  the  quorum 
requisite  for  a  vote  of  ostracism.  Apart  from  these  six  or 
eight  thousand  resident  poor  citizens,  the  rest  of  the 
ekklesia  must  have  varied  constantly,  especially  during  the 
summer  months,  as  military  or  naval  expeditions  went 
forth  abroad  or  came  home:  the  complexion  of  the 
assembly  must  have  been  entirely  altered  whenever  a  fleet 
or  an  army  in  which  eight  or  ten  thousand  citizens  had 
been  serving  came  back  from  foreign  service. 

It   seems   likely   that   at   some   times   of  the   Pelopon- 
nesian  war  the  citizens  were  divided  into  something  like 
parties.      From   425   B.C.   to   422   B.C.   we  may   Parties 
suspect  that  there  was  a  large  body  of  citizens,   cov}d  not  ex- 
led  by  Kleon,  who  were   determined  that  the  steadying 
war  should  not  end  till  Sparta  and  its  allies  had   influence- 
been    rendered   quite   powerless:    a   year   later   there   was 
certainly  a   large  body,  led  by   Nikias,  who  were  willing 
that  the  war  should  be  ended,  provided  that  the  right  of 
Athens    to    extort    tribute    from    its    existing    allies    was 
kept  quite  safe.     The  existence  of  any  parties  would  have 
something  of  a  steadying  influence  on   the  action  of  the 
assembly,  because  a  man  does  not  like  to  vote  against  his 
party  :  but  at  Athens,  if  parties  really  existed,  any  steadying 


106  EKKLESIA  [chap.  x. 

influence  that  they  might  be  expected  to  exercise  was 
probably  neutralised  by  the  fluctuating  composition  of  the 
assembly. 

The  decision  of  every  question  whatsoever  belonged  in 
the  last  resort  to  the  ekklesia.  It  could,  if  it  chose,  with  its 
Ekklesia:  committee  of  five  hundred,  make  any  law  or 
its  powers.  pass  any  resolution.  It  habitually  appointed  the 
commanders  of  naval  or  military  expeditions,  settled  where 
they  should  go,  and  fixed  the  number  of  ships  or  men 
under  their  orders.  It  decided  any  question  that 
arose  suddenly  during  the  war.  When,  for  example,  in 
428  B.C.,  the  tributary  city  of  Mytilene  was  induced  by  an 
oligarchic  party  to  revolt  from  Athens,  but  by  a  democratic 
party  was  restored  to  its  allegiance,  the  ekklesia  decided  on 
one  day  that  all  its  adult  males,  friends  and  foes  alike, 
should  be  killed,  and  the  women  and  children  sold  into 
slavery,  but  on  the  following  day  voted  that  the  inhabitants 
should  keep  their  lives  and  personal  liberty,  but  should 
hand  over  nearly  all  their  land  to  three  thousand  Athenian 
share  holders.  In  like  manner,  in  416  B.C.  the  ekklesia 
voted  that  the  island  of  Melos,  which  had  very  long  ago 
been  colonised  by  the  Lacedaemonians  and  was  now  under 
the  suzerainty  of  Sparta,  should  be  conquered,  that  its  adult 
males  should  be  killed,  and  the  rest  sold  as  slaves. 

The  ekklesia,  however,  though  it  was  if  it  chose 
omnipotent,  submitted  to  two  restraining  formalities. 
Restraining  There  was  one  rule  that  no  law  or  resolution 
formalities,  should  be  proposed  in  the  assembly  till  it  had 
been  approved  by  the  committee  of  Five  Hundred,  and 
another  which  provided  that  any  new  law  which  con- 
tradicted an  existing  law  could  be  indicted  before  a 
dikasterion,  and.,  if  it  were  condemned,  should  be  thereby 
repealed :  if  the  indictment  were  brought  within  one  year, 
the  proposer  might  be  condemned  to  pay  a  heavy  fine.     In 


chap,  x.]  THE  FIVE  HUNDRED  107 

regard  to  laws  and  to  resolutions  about  home  affairs,  these 
rules  were  probably  obeyed :  in  regard  to  foreign  affairs  the 
decisions  of  the  ekklesia  about  Mytilene  show  that  they 
provided  no  safeguard  against  capricious  resolutions. 

The  committee  of  Five  Hundred  was  taken  by  lot  in 
equal  proportions  from  the  ten  tribes,  and  remained  in 
office  for  one  year :  no  man  was  allowed  to  serve  c 
on  it  for  more  than  two  years  in  the  course  of  mittee  of  Five 
his  life.1  It  was  by  far  the  busiest  body  in  the  Hun  re  ' 
Athenian  community.  It  sat  every  day  in  the  year  except 
public  holidays,  and  its  members  received  a  drachma 
daily  from  the  state,  twice  as  much  as  was  paid  to  the 
dikastse.  It  prepared  the  business  for  the  ekklesia,  saw  to 
the  execution  of  its  orders,  inspected  all  details  of  finance, 
and  was  the  executive  government  for  all  departments 
except  the  command  of  military  or  naval  expeditions  and 
the  negotiation  of  treaties  with  foreign  powers.  It  was  in 
power  co-ordinate  with  the  ekklesia  itself.  It  is  not  indeed 
known  whether  in  the  time  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  it 
could  collectively  and  directly  initiate  a  measure,  but  it 
could  certainly  get  any  measure  initiated  by  prompting 
some  citizen  to  propose  it :  and  as  soon  as  a  measure  was 
proposed,  the  committee  had  the  important  right  and  duty 
of  deliberating  on  it  and  deciding  whether  it  should  be 
brought  before  the  ekklesia.  But  though  the  powers  of  the 
committee  were  so  large,  its  members  were  appointed  by 
drawing  lots  among  candidates,  and  therefore  there  was  no 
reason  to  expect  that  they  would  have  any  higher  qualifica- 
tions for  conducting  public  business  than  any  average 
citizens,  except  those  higher  qualifications  which  they 
derived  from  more  intimate  knowledge  of  details  acquired 
during  their  year  of  office. 

The  Dikasteria  were  the  popular  jury  courts.     Each  year 

1  Arist.,  Ath.  Pol,  62. 


108  STRATEGI  [chap.  x. 

six  thousand  dikastse  were  taken  by  lot  from  those  citizens 
who  offered  themselves  as  candidates.  They  were  divided 
into  panels,  and  one  panel,  or  two  or  three 
'  panels,  or  a  part  of  a  panel  was  taken  for  the 
decision  of  a  trial  or  a  suit.  In  known  instances  501,  1001, 
1501  were  the  numbers  of  jurymen  set  to  decide  a  litiga- 
tion: Demosthenes  speaks  of  200  and  2000  as  being  the 
smallest  and  the  largest  numbers  likely  to  occur.1  The 
presiding  officer  in  a  jury  court  was  an  archon  :  but  as  the 
archons  were  themselves  taken  by  lot,  and  only  served  as 
archons  for  one  year  in  their  lives,  it  was  certain  that  the 
president  would  not  be  a  trained  lawyer :  there  were  indeed 
no  trained  lawyers,  since  every  Athenian  thought  himself 
qualified  to  interpret  a  statute.  From  the  many  speeches 
of  counsel  which  have  been  preserved,  it  is  clear  that  the 
president  had  no  power  to  restrain  the  orators  from  using 
irrelevant  arguments:  and  thus  the  jury,  in  arriving  at  a 
decision,  had  nothing  to  guide  it  but  the  persuasiveness  of 
the  speakers,  or  its  own  common  sense  or  prejudices. 

The  ten  strategi  alone  were  elected,  and  were  allowed  to 
serve  in  their  office  year  after  year  as  often  as  the  citizens 
were  willing  to  employ  them.  Men  of  ability 
and  skill  and  experience  were  needed  for  the 
duties  of  the  strategi:  for  on  them  depended  the  conduct 
of  the  war  and  the  collection  of  the  tribute.  The  ekklesia 
decided  what  expeditions  should  be  undertaken  and  which 
of  the  strategi  should  have  command  in  them :  it  was  usual 
to  send  them  out  in  batches  of  three  or  five  or  six  at  a  time, 
and  to  give  one  of  the  batch  some  degree  of  precedence  over 
his  colleagues.  Whenever  an  ambassador  was  needed  to 
negotiate  with  a  foreign  power,  it  was  usual  to  entrust  the 
work  to  one  of  the  strategi.  The  poor  citizens  who  com- 
posed the  Demos  kept  the  strategi  in  strict  subjection  to 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  art.  '  Dikasterion.' 


chap,  x.]  ATHENIAN  DEMOKRATIA  109 

themselves,  partly  by  frequently  taking  a  fresh  person  as 
chief  of  the  strategi,  and  partly  by  ruthlessly  punishing 
with  fine  or  banishment  any  strategus  whose  naval  or 
military  operations  were  thought  to  have  been  mismanaged.1 
The  Athenian  government  in  the  times  that  immediately 
followed  the  death  of  Perikles,  was  called  by  the  Greeks  who 
lived  in  those  times  Demokratia,  or  the  rule  comments 
of  Demos,  that  is  to  say  of  the  whole  body  of  on  the 

,  •   n        /•    i  •  •  t»         structure  of 

citizens  and  especially  of  the  poor  citizens.  .But  the  Athenian 
it  differed  greatly  from  every  other  Greek  Demo-  Demokratia- 
kratia,  because  Athens  was  the  only  Greek  state  in  which 
Demos  was  fed  from  tribute.  The  most  striking  feature 
in  its  structure  is  the  appointment  of  all  officials  except 
the  strategi  by  the  method  of  drawing  lots  between  the 
candidates,  and  the  limitation  of  their  tenure  of  office  to 
a  short  period.  For  the  strategi  alone  skill  was  thought 
necessary:  therefore  the  Athenians  chose  them  by  voting 
and  not  by  lot,  and  often  re-elected  them  for  many  succes- 
sive years.  By  this  course  they  generally  secured  men 
qualified  to  conduct  military  and  naval  operations,  though 
not  in  most  cases  men  with  the  qualities  of  statesmen.  For 
all  civilian  officials  skill  derived  from  experience  was  thought 
superfluous,  and  perhaps  even  noxious.  In  truth  the  ex- 
clusion of  distinguished  men  possessing  experience  in 
governing  was  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
supremacy  of  Demos:  if,  for  example,  able  administrators 
had  found  their  way  into  the  five  hundred  and  had  gained 
experience  by  long  continuance  in  office,  the  five  hundred 
would  have  obtained  more  influence  than  the  poor  citizens 
could  like,  and  it  would  have  been  necessary  for  Demos 
either  to  purge  the  five  hundred  of  its  too  capable  members, 
or  else  to  see  its  own  authority  seriously  diminished.  As 
there  was  no  demand  for  men  of  ability  in  the  civil  services, 

1  E.  Meyer,  Oesch.  d.  Alterthums,  vol.  3.  §  588. 


110  WORKING  OF  THE  [chap.  x. 

those  citizens  who  knew  themselves  to  be  capable  of  pushing 
their  fortunes,  but  had  no  turn  for  naval  or  military  com- 
mand, commonly  turned  to  the  trade  of  Demagogi,  or  self 
appointed  advisers  of  the  common  folk.  Their  work  con- 
sisted mainly  in  gaining  the  favour  of  the  poor  citizens  by 
flattery,  and  in  keeping  it  to  their  own  advantage. 

Before  we  leave  considering  the  structure  of  the  Athenian 
government,  we  may  observe  that  it  was  in  two  particulars 
Comparison  unlike  those  governments  of  modern  times 
with  modern    which    are   sometimes    called    democratic.      In 

democratic  n  ., 

govern-  modern  constitutions  deemed  to  be  democratic, 

ments.  those  classes  which  live  by  the  labour  of  their 

hands  are  citizens  and  have  votes;  in  the  Athenian 
Demokratia  the  working  classes  were  slaves,  and,  being 
personally  unfree,  could  never  enjoy  any  political  privileges. 
In  another  respect  also  some  modern  constitutions  which 
distribute  political  influence  widely  among  the  population 
differ  from  the  Athenian  constitution  :  they  do  not  authorise 
the  citizens  to  meet  personally  in  assembly  and  vote  on  laws 
and  resolutions,  but  only  enable  them  to  choose  representa- 
tives whose  business  it  is  to  think  and  speak  and  vote  on 
their  behalf.  If,  however,  the  representatives  are  turned 
into  delegates  and  are  only  permitted  to  think  and  speak 
and  vote  as  their  electors  command,  the  constitution 
approaches  more  closely  to  the  Athenian  model. 

We  now  have  to  observe  the  working  of  the  Athenian 
government  from  the  death  of  Perikles  to  the  end  of  the 
Working  of  war-  The  business  of  the  government  was 
the  Athenian   divided  into  two  parts — first,  home  affairs,  and 

government,  g  *  t 

429  B.C.-  second,  foreign  affairs  and  the  conduct  of  the 
anfome  war-  Home  affairs  were,  on  the  whole,  well 
affairs.  conducted.      The    poor    citizens,    though    they 

controlled  the  voting  in  the  assembly,  did  not  lay  excessive 
taxes  on  the  rich.     Direct  taxation  was  unusual  at  Athens. 


chap,  x.]  ATHENIAN  GOVERNMENT  111 

A  direct  tax  of  two  hundred  talents  was  levied  in  the  year 
428 : 1  but  it  was  only  a  third  part  of  the  tribute  money  from 
the  dependencies  at  the  same  date,  and  we  do  not  hear  of 
any  other  direct  taxation  of  anything  like  the  same  amount 
in  any  year  throughout  the  history  of  Athens.  The  pecuni- 
ary burdens  that  fell  on  the  rich  alone  arose  from  their 
obligation  to  perform  leiturgiae  or  expensive  public  duties 
at  their  own  charge,  as  the  duties  of  sheriffs  are  still 
performed  in  England.  The  two  great  leiturgiae  were  the 
Trierarchia  or  command  of  a  war  galley,  and  the  Choragia, 
or  the  provision  of  a  chorus  for  a  dramatic  festival:  the 
trierarchia  might  in  the  course  of  a  year  cost  as  much  as 
a  talent,2  but  it  was  usual  for  trierarchs  and  choragi  to 
perform  their  duties  with  zeal,  and  hence  we  may  infer  that 
they  did  not  feel  the  cost  of  them  to  be  an  unfair  imposition. 
The  considerate  treatment  of  the  rich  by  the  poor  in  the 
matter  of  taxation  is  easily  understood  if  we  remember  that 
the  tribute  brought  in  a  much  larger  revenue  than  could 
have  been  got  from  taxation  at  home,  and  that  it  would 
have  been  most  imprudent  in  the  course  of  a  dangerous 
war,  fought  for  the  retention  of  the  tribute,  to  alienate  the 
good  will  of  those  citizens  who  had  large  pecuniary  resources. 
In  two  respects,  it  may  be  admitted,  the  rich  class  at 
Athens  had  reasons  for  discontent.  Firstly,  every  man  of 
ability  and  wealth  saw  that  if  he  could  not  be  a   , ,  m 

*  (i)  Treatment 

successful  strategus  and  would  not  be  a  dem-  of  the  rich 
agogue,  he  had  no  perceptible  influence  in  public  Cltizens- 
affairs,  and,  unless  he  would  spend  weary  hours  in  the 
ekklesia  or  a  dikasterion,  he  was  more  powerless  than  any 
idler  who  received  wages  from  the  treasury:  and  secondly, 
if  he  were  respondent  in  a  trial  or  suit  before  a  dikasterion, 
he  was  likely  to  be  ordered  to  pay  an  excessive  fine  to  the 

1  Thucydides,  3.  19. 

8  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  a. v.  'Leiturgia,'  vol.  2.  p,  27. 


112  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ATHENS  [chap.  x. 

treasury  or  excessive  damages  to  a  poor  litigant,  since 
the  dikastse,  who  were  themselves  poor  and  were  paid  from 
public  funds,  wished  the  treasury  to  be  full  and  the  poor  to 
be  less  poor.  Except  in  these  two  particulars  the  rich  had 
no  ground  of  complaint.  The  merits  of  a  class  government 
in  its  management  of  home  affairs  may  be  measured  by  the 
amount  of  welfare  which  it  allows  to  its  subjects.  At  Athens 
the  rich,  who  were  the  subject  class,  had  little  to  complain 
of:  and  hence  it  appears  to  me  that  the  Athenian  Demo- 
kratia  was,  for  a  class  government,  successful  in  its 
management  of  domestic  concerns.  It  owed  its  success 
in  this  department  very  largely  to  its  possession  of  the 
tribute,  which  made  it  needless  for  the  ruling  class  to 
oppress  its  rich  subjects. 

In  questions  of  foreign  policy  and  the  conduct  of  the  war 
the  case  was  different.     In  judging  Athenian  foreign  policy, 

„     .         we   must  remember  that    any  reallv  excellent 

(2)  Foreign  ,  J  J 

policy  and  conduct  towards  neighbours  who  were  not  fellow 
war"  citizens  was  alien  to  the  ideas  and  experience 

of  the  great  mass  of  the  Greek  communities.  Few 
Greek  peoples,  when  they  were  able  to  act  outside  their 
own  boundaries,  had  ever  adopted  a  foreign  policy  which 
their  neighbours  could  esteem  or  would  willingly  tolerate. 
The  Athenians  in  particular  were  committed  beyond  recall 
to  a  policy  for  which  the  Greek  peoples  generally  disliked 
them,  though  any  one  of  them  would  have  been  glad  to 
imitate  it :  they  had  gained  a  hegemony  over  the  maritime 
cities  when  they  were  helpless,  and  had  made  use  of  it  to 
enrich  themselves  and  so  as  to  be  able  to  threaten  the 
terrestrial  powers.  The  most,  then,  that  could  be  expected 
of  them  was  that  they  should  husband  their  resources,  and 
abstain  from  enterprises  that  were  beyond  their  powers. 

For  more  than  ten  years  they  acted  up  to  this  standard, 
which   alone  was  possible.     In   choosing  their  enterprises 


chai\  x.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ATHENS  113 

they  were  usually  guided  by  men  of  experience  among  the 
strategi:  and  when  for  the  finishing  of  their  operations  in 
the  island  of  Sphakteria  they  followed  the  advice   „     . 

x  m  *  Foreign 

of  the  demagogue  Kleon,  his  advice  was  good,  and  policy : 
the  Spartan  garrison  in  the  island  was  com-  et  s' 
pelled  to  surrender.  In  the  eleventh  year  they  were  able  to 
end  what  is  most  properly  called  the  Peloponnesian  war  by 
making  a  treaty  of  peace  with  Sparta,  which  had  at  any 
rate  the  advantage  that  in  it  the  Spartans  disregarded  the 
interests  of  their  allies,  and  for  the  time  being  lost  their 
confidence.  But  within  the  next  five  years  the  Athenians 
listened  to  the  advice  of  Alkibiades,  a  reckless  and 
unscrupulous  nephew  of  Perikles,  who  hoped  by  leading 
his  countrymen  into  attractive  but  dangerous  adventures 
to  attain  to  such  a  half  princely  position  as  Perikles  had 
enjoyed.  Acting  under  suasion  from  Alkibiades,  they  first 
engaged  in  a  foolish  war  in  the  Peloponnesus,  which  enabled 
the  Spartans  to  regain  a  grip  on  the  peoples  around  them, 
and  then  in  415  they  resolved  to  try  to  compel  the  Dorian 
cities  of  Sicily  to  pay  them  tribute.  Their  expedition  to 
Sicily  ended  about  September  28,  413,  in  a  naval  battle 
in  the  Great  Harbour  of  Syracuse.  In  that  sea  fight  and  in 
the  hopeless  operations  on  the  dry  land  which  followed  it, 
they  lost  the  largest  fleet  and  army  that  they  had  ever  sent 
out.  Thenceforward  their  command  of  the  sea  could  not  be 
kept  intact,  and  the  collection  of  money  from  the  maritime 
cities  was  precarious  and  comparatively  unproductive 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   GREEK   CITIES,   412   B.C-338   B.C. 

As  a  turning  point  in  Greek  history,  the  battle  in  the  Great 
Harbour  of  Syracuse  was  only  second  to  the  battle  of 
The  course  Salamis.  In  view  of  its  importance  we  must 
of  Greek         notice  what  changes  it  brought  about,  and  what 

history,  °  ° 

412  B.C.-  was  the  general  course  of  Greek  history  after  it 
338B.C.  occurred  until  338,  when  the  Greek  cities  lost 
their  independence.  Before  the  war  in  Sicily  the  relations 
among  the  Greek  cities  could  be  expressed  in  a  very  simple 
formula.  Athens  had  the  control  of  the  sea,  and  therefore 
could  drain  off  and  consume  the  surplus  wealth  of  the 
maritime  cities  of  the  ^Egean  sea:  the  terrestrial  Greek 
powers  had  formed  a  coalition  to  protect  themselves  against 
the  aggressive  Athenians.  But  during  the  war  from  431 
to  421,  and  in  Sicily  in  414  and  413,  both  Athens  and  its 
enemies  had  used  up  much  of  their  strength,  and  after  the 
Sicilian  war  Athens  no  longer  possessed  undisputed  control 
of  the  sea,  though  it  was  still  slightly  stronger  afloat  than 
Sparta.  While  Athens  and  Sparta  had  been  growing  ex- 
hausted, Persia  remained  untouched,  and  in  412  Athens, 
Sparta,  and  Persia  were  about  equally  strong  or  equally 
weak.  Hence  from  412  there  ensued  a  Competition  among 
these  powers  for  access  to  the  wealth  of  the  maritime  cities. 
In  that  competition  the  three  powers,  Athens,  Sparta,  and 
Persia,  at  first  all  took  part :  after  405  the  competitors  were 

only  Sparta  and  Persia.    In  394  the  competition  ended :  the 
in 


chap,  xi.]        GREEK  HISTORY  FROM  412  B.C.  115 

maritime  cities  of  Asia  Minor  were  left  in  subjection  to 
Persia,  and  the  other  maritime  cities  became  independent. 

After  the  period  marked  by  the  competition  for  the 
tribute  had  ended,  there  ensued  for  seven  years  till  387  a 
second  period  marked  by  Balance  of  Weakness  among  the 
Greek  cities.  This  balance,  for  reasons  which  will  be  ex- 
plained, did  not  suit  the  Spartans,  and  in  concert  with  the 
King  of  Persia  they  took  measures  to  upset  it.  Their 
oppressive  behaviour  was  resented  by  their  neighbours,  and 
a  third  period  from  387  to  362  was  marked  by  Conflicts 
(they  were  the  last)  between  the  Terrestrial  Hellenic  Powers. 

After  362  conflicts  between  the  Greek  cities  became 
trivial,  because  the  cities  were  wearied  out,  and  alliances 
were  not  made,  because  no  two  could  trust  one  another. 
Hence  the  period  after  362  was  marked  by  a  return  of  the 
Greek  cities  to  a  condition  of  Political  Isolation  somewhat 
worse  than  that  which  had  prevailed  before  the  battle  of 
Salamis,  because  now  they  hated  each  other  more  cordially. 
During  this  period,  which  lasted  till  338,  they  came  into 
contact  with  the  healthy  and  vigorous  tribal  kingdom  of 
the  Macedonians,  and  in  338  they  were  taken  under  its 
protection. 

The  periods  then  of  Greek  history  after  412  were  these : — 

i.  412-394.  Competition  for  control  of  the  maritime  cities 
of  the  JSgean  sea. 

ii.  394-387.  Balance  of  weakness  among  the  Greek  cities. 

in.  387-362.  Conflicts  between  terrestrial  Greek  cities. 

iv.  362-338.  Political  isolation  of  the  Greek  cities,  and 
the  end  of  their  independence. 

I.   COMPETITION   FOR  THE   MARITIME   CITIES 

The  competition  for  the  maritime  cities  lasted  eighteen 
years.  In  the  course  of  those  years  the  competition  went 
through  three  phases : — 


116  COMPETITION  FOR  THE  [chap.  xi. 

(1)  412-405.  Balance  of  weakness  among  the  competitors. 

(2)  405-400.  Amicable  partition  of  the  maritime  cities 
between  Sparta  and  Persia. 

(3)  400-394.  Attempt  of  the  Spartans  to  rob  the  Persians 
of  their  share. 

In  412  the  communities  inhabiting  Athens  and  Sparta 
were  both  much  smaller  in  numbers  than  the  communities 
(i)  Balance  m  fcne  same  towns  thirty  years  earlier.  The 
of  weakness  Athenians  had  lost  about  fifteen  thousand  citizens 
Competitors,  m  the  Sicilian  expedition  alone,  and  large  numbers 
412-405.  ka(j  perished  before  of  pestilence  or  in  war.     We 

may  estimate  the  adult  males  who  remained  at  something 
between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand.  The  Spartiatse  in 
480  were  reckoned  by  Herodotus  at  eight  thousand  fighting 
men :  in  418  the  three  thousand  five  hundred  who  fought 
at  Mantineia  were  five  sixths  of  the  whole  number,  and 
therefore  the  whole  fighting  strength  was  scarcely  more 
than  four  thousand.1  The  Athenians  had  in  money  not 
much  besides  their  reserve  of  a  thousand  talents:  the 
Spartans  had  almost  nothing.  The  Persians  were  rich  in 
money,  but  their  bowmen  could  not  contend  with  the  Greek 
hoplites. 

In  412  Chios  and  a  few  other  maritime  cities  which  had 
paid  tribute  to  Athens  chose  Sparta  as  their  leader  and  thus 
Events  declared  war  against  Athens.     The   Athenians 

412-408.  were  for  the  moment  extremely  weak :  but  they 

had  their  reserved  fund  of  a  thousand  talents,  and  by  spend- 
ing that  fund  on  ships  and  seamen  they  soon  became  a  little 
stronger  at  sea  than  the  Spartans.  In  consequence  the 
Spartans,  desiring  to  get  money  to  pay  more  seamen,  were 
glad  to  make  (about  February  411)  a  treaty  with  the  Persian 
satraps  of  Lydia  and  the  Hellespont :  in  return  for  a  promise 
of  money  they  agreed  to  recognise  that  the  Greek  cities  on 

1  Herodotus,  7.  234,  and  Thucydides,  5.  64,  68. 


chap,  xi.]  MARITIME  CITIES  117 

the  mainland  of  Asia  Minor  were  subject  to  the  Persian 

king.1     For  this  action  they  have  been  loudly  decried :  but 

whether  the  Asiatic  cities  were  exposed  to  more  oppression 

under  the  Persians  than  they  would  have  suffered  under 

Greeks,  we  cannot  tell.     To  the  maritime  cities  not  in  Asia 

Minor  the  new  conditions  established  by  the  defeat  of  the 

Athenians  in  Sicily  may  probably  have  brought  appreciable 

relief,  since  neither  Athens  nor  Sparta  could  squeeze  them 

very  hard,  for  fear  that  they  might  change  sides  and  go  over 

to  the  enemy.     For  four  years  the  treaty  of  411  gave  no 

perceptible  advantage  to  the  Spartans,  because  Tissaphernes, 

satrap  of  Lydia,  evaded  his  promises  to  pay ;  but  about  the 

end  of  408  Dareius  Nothus,  King  of  Persia,  himself  decided 

that   the  Athenians  might  be  dangerous  to  him  and  the 

Spartans   could  not.     He   deposed   Tissaphernes  from   his 

satrapy  and  appointed  in  his   stead  his  own   second   son, 

Cyrus,  with   instructions   to  give  liberal  subsidies  to   the 

Spartans,  but  no  doubt  only  on  condition  that  the  Spartans 

conformed  faithfully  to  the  terms  of  their  treaty  concluded 

in  411  with  the  Persian  satraps,  and  made  no  attempt  either 

to  give  independence  to  the  Greek  cities  in  Asia  Minor  or  to 

get  them  into  their  own  control. 

Cyrus,   from   his   arrival   at   Sardis  in   407,  treated   the 

Asiatic   Greek  cities  with   consideration    and    indulgence, 

because  he  saw  that  the  Greeks  made  far  better 

soldiers  than  the  Persians,  and  he  desired  to  have   B.c-405 

Greek  soldiers  under   his  command.     Probably   B-c-J  Cyrus 

.  at  Sardis. 

this  desire  was  prompted  by  attention  not  to  his 

father's  interest  but  to  his  own.    In  his  dealings,  however, 

with  the  Spartans  he  faithfully  obeyed  his  father's  instructions, 

since  in  that  matter  his  own  interest  and  his  father's  were 


1  Thucydides,  8.  08.  The  earlier  documents  given  by  Thucydides  in  8. 
18  and  8.  37  were  only  drafts  of  treaties  made  by  Spartan  commanders 
and  were  not  ratified  by  the  Spartan  government. 


118  DISTRESS  AT  [chap.  xi. 

identical.  When  in  407  and  405  the  Spartans  gave  the 
command  of  their  fleet  in  Asiatic  waters  to  Lysander,  who 
was  perfectly  willing  to  adhere  to  the  stipulations  of  the 
treaty  of  411,  Cyrus  gave  money  in  profusion:  when  in  406 
they  employed  Kallikratidas,  who  cherished  a  generous 
desire  to  give  independence  to  the  Asiatic  Greeks  because 
they  were  Greeks,  and  was  therefore  inclined  to  thwart  the 
policy  both  of  the  Persians  and  of  his  own  employers,  the 
Spartan  rulers,  he  refused  to  give  Kallikratidas  an  obol,  and 
even  avoided  admitting  him  to  his  presence.  Kallikratidas 
was  defeated  and  slain  in  406  at  Arginusse:  Lysander  in 
405  won  the  decisive  battle  of  iEgospotami.  It  is  however 
to  be  observed  that,  though  the  results  of  the  great  sea  fights 
at  Arginusae  and  iEgospotami  were  partly  due  to  the  hostility 
of  Cyrus  towards  Kallikratidas  and  his  warm  friendship  for 
Lysander,  Kallikratidas  owed  his  defeat  and  death  partly 
also  to  his  rash  conduct  in  attacking  somewhat  needlessly  a 
superior  Athenian  fleet  commanded  by  capable  officers  ;  and 
Lysander  would  have  had  no  chance  of  winning  his  astonish- 
ing victory  if  the  Athenian  fleet  stationed  at  iEgospotami 
had  been  under  men  at  all  comparable  in  ability  to  handle 
their  ships  and  manage  their  crews  with  the  officers  who  in 
every  previous  year  had  commanded  the  Athenians  in  their 
naval  operations. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  take  a  view  of  the  internal  condition 
of  Athens  after  the  disaster  in  Sicily.  The  Athenians  knew 
that  -since  they  had  lost  their  fleet  they  would 
condition  of  no  longer  be  able  to  collect  the  whole  of  their 
t  ens,  412.  tribute ;  and  hence  even  the  ruling  class  of  the 
poor  citizens  saw  that  it  would  be  hard  to  go  on  voting 
themselves  doles  and  wages  for  civilian  services,  and  also  to 
pay  their  oarsmen.  They  began  to  think  they  might  be 
compelled  to  adopt  some  government  less  expensive  than 
their  kind  of  demokratia,  which  needed  very  large  tribute  to 


chap,  xi.]  ATHENS  119 

support  it.  As  a  tentative  measure  they  set  up  a  board  of 
ten  Probuli,  charged  with  the  duty  of  suggesting  retrench- 
ments of  expenditure,  and  almost  certainly  also  invested 
with  the  power  of  settling  what  resolutions  might  be  proposed 
in  the  general  assembly.1  But  in  their  anxiety  to  avoid 
choosing  demagogues  among  the  Probuli,  they  elected  elderly 
men  of  good  character  but  of  no  political  experience,  like 
Hagnon  and  the  poet  Sophokles.  It  may  be  that  no  ten 
men  could  be  found  who  combined  political  experience  with 
a  high  reputation  for  personal  probity. 

In  the  course  of  412  the  distress  at  Athens  was  greatly 
increased  because  the  Spartans  had  established  a  permanent 
garrison  at Dekeleia  in  Attica  and  kept  the  country  peisander, 
constantly  devastated :  it  followed  of  necessity  412>  4II# 
that  the  whole  population  was  again  crowded  into  Athens. 
The  general  situation,  and  especially  the  doubts  felt  by  the 
poor  citizens  whether  they  could  find  themselves  wages  and 
doles,  suited  the  purposes  of  a  man  named  Peisander,  who 
had  as  an  active  demagogue  been  a  favourite  with  the 
distressed  rulers  of  the  city.  He  came  forward  as  an  advocate 
of  a  new  scheme  of  government.  He  told  the  assembled 
citizens  that  there  was  no  hope  of  salvation  for  Athens  except 
in  an  alliance  with  Persia  and  subsidies  from  Persia,  and  that 
alliance  with  Persia  and  its  attendant  subsidies  could  be 
obtained  if  they  would  modify  their  demokratia  so  as  to 
entrust  authority  to  a  body  of  men  smaller  than  the  whole 
body  of  citizens  and  such  as  the  King  of  Persia  could  trust.2 
He  gained  a  provisional  assent  to  his  proposal,  and  was  sent 
as  envoy  with  ten  others  to  the  Persian  satrap  Tissaphernes. 
Before  his  departure  he  visited  all  the  Hetsereise  or  political 

1  Thucydides,  8.  1.  3.  Grote  (ch.  61)  expresses  an  opinion  that  the  Probuli 
had  not  the  power  of  judging  what  proposals  might  be  made  :  but  a  passage 
quoted  by  Arnold  in  his  note  on  Thucydides,  8.  1.  3  from  Aristotle,  Pol.,  4. 
1 !,  4,  indicates  clearly  that  they  had. 

-  Thucydides,  8.  53. 


120  REIGN  OF  TERROR  [chap,  xi 

clubs  of  discontented  rich  men  in  Athens  and  told  them 
what  to  do.  During  his  absence  the  clubs  prepared  for  the 
success  of  his  projects  by  skilfully  organising  a  series  of 
political  assassinations. 

When  Peisander  came  back  without  having  obtained  any 
promise  of  help  from  Tissaphernes,  a  reign  of  terror  had  been 

established  and  he  was  able  to  do  whatever  he 
effected  by  chose.  The  sovereign  legislative  powers  of  the 
Peisander,       ekklesia  were  handed  over  nominally  to  a  body 

of  five  thousand  citizens,  which  however  was  not 
called  into  existence :  the  whole  executive  power,  which  had 
hitherto  belonged  to  the  committee  of  five  hundred,  was 
forcibly  taken  over  by  a  new  council  of  four  hundred  con- 
spirators, who  installed  themselves  in  office  by  intimidation 
and  afterwards  acted  under  the  guidance  of  Peisander  and 
his  confidants  Antiphon  and  Phrynichus.1  Since  the 
assembly  of  five  thousand  was  only  a  sham  and  had  no  real 
existence,  all  power — executive,  legislative,  and  judicial — was 
lodged  in  the  hands  of  the  four  hundred  or  of  the  three  men 
who  settled  what  the  four  hundred  should  do. 

The  name  oligarchia  is  used  by  Thucydides  to  denote  the 
government  of  the  Four  Hundred : 2  but  his  use  of  the  word 
shows  how  widely  its  different  meanings  diverged  from  one 

another.  It  was  applied  by  Herodotus  to  the 
Hundred :  government  of  the  Bacchiad  princes  at  Corinth, 
411  was  defined  by  Aristotle  as  meaning  any  selfish 

government  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the  rich  class,  and 
is  employed  by  Thucydides  as  a  description  of  the  rule  in  41 1 
of  a  gang  of  murderous  adventurers,  which  was  not  by  any 
means  identical  with  the  rich  class  of  citizens.  It  is  most 
unfortunate  for  students  of  political  institutions  that  the 
word  exists :  but  I  have  been  unable  to  dispense  with  the 
use  of  it,  because  without  it  I  could  not  make  any  reference 

1  Thucydides,  8.  65-70.  2  Ibid.,  8.  89.  1  and  3. 


chap,  xi.]  AT  ATHENS  121 

to  a  great  store  of  sound  information  contained  in  Aristotle's 
Politics.  The  best  that  can  be  done  is  to  use  the  word 
as  sparingly  as  possible,  and  never  without  pointing  out  in 
what  sense  it  is  employed.  The  Four  Hundred,  whether 
with  Thucydides  we  call  their  ascendency  an  oligarchic  or  in 
more  appropriate  language  speak  of  them  as  a  small  band  of 
villains,  did  not  long  retain  their  power.  For  four  months 
in  the  second  half  of  411  they  kept  the  citizens  in  subjection 
by  a  few  well  judged  assassinations:  then  dissensions  arose 
in  their  own  body,  and  a  mutiny  of  some  hoplites  led  to  their 
overthrow.1 

After  the  four  hundred  had  been  deposed,  the  supreme 
power  of  voting  in  the  assembly  was  given  to  those  citizens 
who   were  not  too   poor  to   provide  a  suit  of  Qra(iuai 
armour :   they  were  called  the   Five  Thousand,   return  to 

i  •  ii  i  -i        t      a  -.  ^     demokratia 

but  were  in  truth  about  nine  thousand.  In  410,  at  Athens, 
however,  the  Athenians  heard  that  their  fleet  had  **°  BC- 
won  a  victory  at  Kyzikus,  on  the  shore  of  the  sea  of  Propontis, 
which  enabled  it  to  get  control  of  the  Bosporus  and  to  levy 
as  a  toll  one  tenth  of  the  value  of  every  cargo  coming  from 
the  Black  Sea.2  The  Spartiatse  offered  them  a  peace  with 
far  larger  concessions  than  they  could  have  hoped  for  before 
the  battle  of  Kyzikus,  proposing  withdrawal  of  the  Spartan 
garrison  from  Dekeleia  in  return  for  withdrawal  of  the  far 
less  important  Athenian  garrisons  from  Spartan  territory, 
exchange  of  prisoners,  and  retention  by  each  side  of  what  it 
had.3  The  nine  thousand  at  Athens,  being  elated  by  their 
success,  thought  that  the  war  could  even  yet  be  continued 
with  profit.  They  declined  the  offer  of  the  Spartiatse,  thus 
showing  that  in  matters  of  foreign  policy  they  were  equally 
imprudent  with  their  poorer  fellow  citizens.     As  the  war  was 

1  Thucydides,  8.  93  ;  Ath.  Pol,  31,  32.  2  Xen.,  Hellen.,  1.  1.  16-22. 

3  Diodorus,  13.  52,  53,   with  passages  from   other  sources  cited  by  E. 
Meyer,  Gesch.  d,  Alterth.,  vol.  4.  §  712  note. 


122  CAPTURE  OF  [chap.  xt. 

to  go  on,  the  poor  would  be  needed  as  oarsmen :  therefore 
it  was  necessary  that  they  should  be  in  a  good  humour  and 
willing  to  serve.  The  nine  thousand  gave  them  back  their 
old  pecuniary  allowances  with  a  new  dole  of  two  obols  daily 
for  the  very  poor,1  and  either  in  410  or  not  long  afterwards 
restored  them  to  their  places  in  the  ekklesia.  Thus  in  410 
or  soon  afterwards  demokratia  was  again  established,  but 
without  any  very  certain  income  from  abroad  to  provide 
daily  bread  for  the  ruling  class. 

From  the  late  summer  of  411  till  the  early  summer  of 
408  the  naval  operations  of  the  Athenians  were  managed 
Athenian  mainly  by  Alkibiades,  who,  though  he  had  while 
conduct  of  absent  from  Athens  in  415  been  condemned 
4ii  b.c!-  to  death  for  high  treason,2  and  was  entirely  un- 
404  B.C.  trustworthy,  had  in  411  been  accepted  as  a 
commander,  first  by  an  Athenian  armament  in  Samos  and 
afterwards  on  the  fall  of  the  Four  Hundred  by  his  country- 
men at  home.  His  management  of  the  fleet  was  skilful: 
he  took  a  leading  part  in  winning  the  battle  of  Kyzikus, 
and  gained  many  minor  successes:  and  in  407  he  was  at 
Athens  as  chief  of  the  strategi.  In  that  year,  however,  the 
Athenians  suspected  him  of  desiring  to  become  tyrannus. 
They  deposed  him  from  office,  and  for  the  year  406  appointed 
ten  strategi  all  equal  in  power  and  without  a  chief.  Eight 
of  these  strategi  won  a  splendid  victory  off  the  Arginusae 
islets  near  Mytilene :  but  after  the  action  several  Athenian 
ships  that  had  been  damaged  sank  in  a  storm  with  their 
crews,  and  it  was  said  that  the  strategi  had  not  taken  proper 
pains  to  save  them.  The  Ekklesia  by  a  legislative  enact- 
ment, resembling  an  attainder,  resolved  that  the  strategi 
should  be  put  to  death,  and  six  of  them  who  alone  were  in 
custody  were  compelled  to  drink  poison.3    In  the  following 

1  SiupeXla.     Ath.  Pol,  28,  3.  2  Thucydides,  6.  61  end. 

3  Xen.,  Hellen.,  1.  7.  34,35. 


chap,  xi.]  ATHENS  123 

year,  405,  all  the  new  strategi  except  Konon  were  incompetent, 
and  the  whole  Athenian  fleet  of  a  hundred  and  eighty  ships 
was  surprised  by  the  Lacedaemonian  admiral  Lysander  at 
yEgospotami  on  the  Hellespont,  and  all  the  ships  were 
captured  except  nine  which  Konon  contrived  to  save.1 
In  404  the  city  of  Athens  was  closely  blockaded,  and  was 
compelled  by  hunger  to  surrender.  The  Athenians  were 
condemned  to  the  loss  of  their  Long  Walls,  were  required 
to  give  up  all  their  ships  of  war  except  twelve,  and  in 
foreign  policy  were  compelled  to  obey  the  orders  of  the 
Lacedaemonians.2 

From  405,  when  the  Athenian  navy  was  destroyed  at 
iEgospotami,  the  Spartans  took  over  those  maritime  cities 
which  had  hitherto  been  under  the  hegemony  ^  40S  B  c . 
of  Athens,  leaving  those  in  Asia  Minor  to  Persia :  399  B.C. 

Amicable 

thus   an   amicable  partition   of   the  cities   was   division  of 
made  between  the  Spartans  and  the  Persians,   the  maritime 

A  cities  be- 

The  cities  under  the  Spartans  were  compelled  tween  Sparta 
to  pay  their  new  masters  a  tribute  probably  and  Persia- 
somewhat  larger  than  they  had  paid  to  Athens  in  the  days 
before  the  Sicilian  expedition,  when  the  exactions  of  the 
Athenians  stood  at  their  highest  point:  and  the  Spartans 
made  an  attempt  such  as  the  Athenians  had  never  essayed 
to  set  up  governments  of  their  own  in  the  tributary  cities. 
To  each  city  they  sent  a  Harmost  or  organiser :  the  Harmost 
chose  a  body  of  ten  men,  called  a  Dekarchy,  to  rule  their 
fellow  citizens  in  the  interest  of  the  Spartans.  Their 
scheme  was  intended  to  strengthen  their  hold  over  their 
dependencies,  and,  if  it  had  been  at  all  well  carried  out, 
might  have  led  the  Spartans  for  their  own  sakes  to  promote 
the  prosperity  of  the  subject  cities:  but  the  Spartans  who 
were  sent  out  as  Harmosts,  having  never  had  experience 
of  governing  any   subject    population    except   the  Helots, 

1  Xen.,  Hdlen.,  2.  1.  2  Ibid.,  2.  2.  20. 


124  SPARTAN  ASCENDENCY  [chap.  xt. 

were  unfit  for  their  duties.  They  only  cared  about  getting 
in  the  tribute  and  enjoying  themselves:1  and  in  con- 
sequence they  were  hated  in  the  cities  to  which  they  were 
sent  as  rulers.  In  the  mainland  also  of  Greece  the 
Spartiatse  used  their  new  power  in  a  masterful  way.  They 
made  the  Athenians  contribute  to  their  war  fund,  and 
deprived  the  Eleians  of  a  part  of  their  territory.2 

The  Spartan  ascendency  in  Greece  was  no  less  oppressive 
than  the  maritime  ascendency  of  Athens  had  been.  But 
Quarrel  be-  tne  Spartiatse  might  probably  have  continued 
tween  Sparta  to  dominate  their  neighbours  for  many  years, 
xerxes,  King  if  they  had  not  intervened  in  a  dispute  about 
of  Persia.  ^he  succession  to  the  Persian  throne.  On  the 
death  of  Dareius  Nothus  in  404,  his  eldest  son  succeeded 
him  at  Susa  as  Artaxerxes  the  Second ;  but  the  younger 
son  Cyrus,  satrap  at  Sardis  in  Lydia,  tried  in  401  to 
dethrone  his  brother,  and  his  enterprise  was  aided  both 
by  Sparta  and  by  the  Greek  cities  of  Asia  Minor.  About 
the  end  of  401  it  became  known  to  the  Greeks  of  Ionia 
that  Cyrus  had  been  slain  at  Cunaxa  in  Babylonia,  and 
they  saw  that  they  would  be  exposed  to  the  vengeance  of 
Artaxerxes  for  the  help  they  had  given  to  the  pretender. 
To  save  themselves  they  asked  the  Spartans  to  aid  them  in 
a  war  to  set  themselves  free  from  Persia. 

The  Spartans  granted  the  request,  and  from  400  till  394 
(3)  400  B.C.-  ^ey  sent  armies  to  Asia  Minor  under  Thim- 
304  B.C.  bron,  under  Derkyllidas,  and  under  King 
the Spartiatae  Agesilaus.  So  early  as  397  Pharnabazus,  satrap 
to  rob  the  0f  Phrygia,  which  included  the  Asiatic  shore  of 
the  Asiatic  the  Hellespont,  saw  that  in  order  to  drive  the 
cities.  Spartans     out    of    Asia     Minor     the    Persians 

must  get  command  of  the  sea;  and  he  gained  Artaxerxes 

1  Plutarch,  Amat.  Narrat.,  p.  773  ;  Xen.,  Hell.,  5.  4.  56-57. 

2  Ath.  Pol.,  39.  2 ;  Xen.,  Hell.,  3.  2. 


chap,  xi.]  ENDED  AT  KNIDUS  125 

to  his  opinion.1  In  July  394  a  large  Persian  fleet  of 
Phoenician  vessels,  under  the  joint  command  of  Konon,  the 
one  Athenian  who  was  a  good  naval  officer,  and  of 
Pharnabazus  himself,  both  acting  as  Persian  admirals,  won 
a  great  victory  at  sea  off  the  promontory  of  Knidus  in  the 
south-west  of  Asia  Minor,  and  put  an  end  to  the  maritime 
supremacy  of  Sparta.2  Konon  and  Pharnabazus  visited  the 
maritime  cities  and  restored  all  of  them  but  about  four  or 
five  to  complete  and  several  independence,  which  they  had 
not  enjoyed  since  477,  when  they  chose  the  Athenians  as 
their  leaders.3 

II.  394  B.a-387  b.c.    balance  of  weakness  among 

THE   GREEK   STATES 

In  394,  when  the  Spartans  lost  their  maritime  ascendency, 
they  were  also  deprived  of  their  domination  over  terrestrial 
Hellas  outside  of  the  Peloponnesus.  Before  the  battle  of 
Knidus  was  fought,  Bceotia,  Athens,  and  some  other  Greek 
states  were  thinking  of  combining  in  order  to  reduce  the 
oppressive  power  of  Sparta.  Lysander  marched  out  from 
Lacedaamonia  into  Bceotia  but  was  slain  at  Haliartus. 
After  his  death  the  Spartans  retired  out  of  Bceotia:  and 
then  an  undisguised  coalition  was  formed  by  Bceotia,  Athens, 
Argos,  Corinth,  and  some  towns  in  Eubcea.  The  armies  of 
the  coalition  met  at  Corinth  and  there  fought  an  even 
battle  against  the  Spartans.  King  Agesilaus,  who  had  been 
warring  in  Asia  Minor,  having  been  recalled  by  the  Spartan 
government,  marched  through  Thrace,  Macedonia,  and 
Thessaly.    At   Koroneia  in  Bceotia  he  was  wounded  in  a 

1  The  date  397  is  fixed  by  Xen.,  Hell,  3.  4.  1. 

5  Xen.,  Hell.,  4.  3.  10-14. 

*  Xen.,  Hell.,  4.  8.  1-5.  Cities  not  restored  in  394  to  independence  were 
.^gina  (Xen.,  Hell.,  5.  1.  1,  2,  and  5) :  Methymne  {Ibid.,  6.  8.  29) :  Abydos 
(Ibid.,  6.  8.  32):  Oreus  in  Euboea  (Ibid.,  5.  4.  56,  and  Plutarch,  Amat. 
Xarrat.,  p.  773). 


126  SPAETA  AIDED  BY  [chap.  xi. 

battle  which  only  enabled  his  army  to  secure  its  passage 
into  the  Peloponnesus.  In  393  Konon  was  permitted  by 
Pharnabazus  to  rebuild  the  Long  Wall  that  joined  Athens 
to  the  Peiraieus :  in  393  and  392  the  enemies  of  Sparta 
occupied  the  isthmus  of  Corinth  in  force,  and  the  Spartans 
were  not  able  to  dislodge  them.  The  powers  in  coalition 
held  firmly  together,  and  Corinth  was  so  closely  joined  with 
Argos  that  it  was  said  hyperbolically  to  be  a  part  of  Argive 
territory.1  For  seven  years  from  394  till  387  Sparta  was  no 
more  than  a  Peloponnesian  power.  All  the  Greek  cities 
had  become  permanently  very  weak  in  consequence  of  their 
exhausting  wars,  but  among  these  weak  states  equilibrium 
was  maintained.  Sparta,  the  least  weak,  was  kept  in  check 
by  the  coalition  of  Boeotia,  Athens,  Argos,  and  Corinth. 

The  Spartans,  as  soon  as  they  had  failed  to  dislodge  their 
enemies  from  the  isthmus  of  Corinth,  saw  that  they  must 
Negotiations  for  the  present  abandon  all  hope  of  gaining 
of  the  dominions  in  Asia,  and  that  the  most  they  could 

Spartans  t  m  J 

with  the  possibly  attain  was  a  restoration  of  their  ascen- 
!>e2rga£Ifin8''  dency  in  Europe.  Their  ultimate  aim,  then, 
387  B.C.  henceforward  was  merely  to  be  able  to  oppress 
the  European  Greeks.  A  step  towards  that  end  would  be 
taken  if  they  could  compel  their  opponents  in  Greece 
to  desist  from  hostilities  and  submit  to  conditions  which 
they  would  impose.  But  even  a  cessation  of  the  war  in 
Greece  and  a  pacification  such  as  suited  their  purposes 
could  not  be  obtained,  unless  Artaxerxes  could  be  induced 
to  put  some  pressure  on  those  Greek  powers  which  were 
keeping  them  penned  up  within  the  Peloponnesus.  Accord- 
ingly from  392  they  exerted  themselves  to  gain  Artaxerxes 
over  to  their  views.  For  five  years  Artaxerxes  and  his 
advisers  were  of  divided  opinions :  at  last  a  Spartan  envoy, 
Antalkidas,  by  going  to  the  Persian  court  at  Susa  gained 

1  Xen.,  Hell.,  4.  4.  1-13;  4.  8.  34;  5.  1.  36. 


chap,  xi.]  PEKSIA  127 

the  Persian  King  over  to  countenance  the  projects  of  the 
Spartans.  It  is  probable  that  the  Persian  statesmen  foresaw 
that  if  Artaxerxes  enabled  the  Spartans  to  impose  cruel 
conditions  on  their  Greek  neighbours,  but  did  not  afterwards 
help  them  to  enforce  those  conditions,  all  the  Greeks  would 
be  kept  busy  fighting  in  Europe,  and  could  not  molest 
him  in  Asia.  At  any  rate  Artaxerxes  gave  Antalkidas  a 
document  prescribing  such  terms  as  the  Spartans  desired.1 

The  document  given  to  Antalkidas  declared  that  King 
Artaxerxes  thought  it  right  that  all  the  Greek  cities  in  Asia, 
with  the  islands  Klazomense  and  Cyprus  should  The  Peace  of 
belong  to  him,  but  that  all  the  other  Greek  Antalkidas, 
cities  both  great  and  small  should  be  auto- 
nomous, except  Lemnos  and  Imbros  and  Skyros:  these 
should  belong  as  of  old  to  the  Athenians.2  The  declaration 
was  intended  by  the  Spartans  to  do  damage  especially  to 
Thebes,  Argos,  and  Corinth.  If  the  several  cities  in  the 
Boeotian  confederation  became  autonomous  Thebes  would 
be  powerless,  and  Argos  and  Corinth  when  once  they 
were  separate  could  easily  be  reduced  to  obedience  by  the 
Spartans.  Athens  was  allowed  to  keep  Lemnos  and  Imbros 
and  Skyros,  where  it  had  Kleruchise,  in  order  that  it  might 
not  be  tempted  to  give  aid  to  Thebes,  Argos,  and  Corinth 
when  the  Spartans  wished  to  intimidate  them.  Antalkidas 
before  leaving  Persia  had  foreseen  that  the  Greek  cities 
generally  would  detest  the  terms  of  the  proposed  pacifica- 
tion, and  had  therefore  induced  Artaxerxes  to  provide  him 
with  ships  or  money  which  placed  him  at  the  head  of  a 
fleet  of  eighty  triremes  and  made  him  master  of  the  sea.8 
The  fleet  under  Antalkidas  and  a  Spartan  army  under 
Agesilaus,  backed  with  threats  from  Artaxerxes,  convinced 

1  Xen.,   Hell.,    4.    8.    12-16;   Plutarch,   Arlax.,   22;  Xen.,  Hell,  5.  1, 
25-31. 

1  Xen.,  Hell.,  5.  1.  31.  *  Ibid.,  5.  1.  28. 


128  SPARTA  DEFEATED  BY  [chap.  xi. 

the  Greeks  that  opposition  was  useless:  the  terms  of 
pacification  were  under  compulsion  ratified  by  all  the  chief 
cities  in  Hellas,  and  the  so  called  treaties  of  peace  between 
the  Spartans  and  the  other  Greeks  were  known  as  the 
Peace  of  Antalkidas.1 

III.  387  b.c-362  b.c.    last  conflicts  among  the 

GREEK   STATES 

From  the  moment  that  the  Greek  urban  bodies  politic  let 
a  king  of  so  little  efficient  power  as  Artaxerxes  intervene  to 
settle  their  relations  with  each  other  we  can  discern  clearly 
that  they  were  not  of  those  fittest  bodies  politic,  which 
can  hand  on  independence  to  many  succeeding  generations. 
Their  present  communities  were  feeble,  and  their  communities 
in  the  next  generation  would  be  feebler  still.  In  spite,  how- 
ever, of  their  exhaustion  they  yet  engaged  in  destructive 
conflicts  for  twenty  five  years  more.  These  twenty  five  years 
from  387  to  362  were  divided  into  two  clearly  marked  parts : 

(1)  387-379.  Ascendency  of  Sparta  among  the  terrestrial 
Hellenes. 

(2)  379-362.  Destruction  of  the  power  of  the  Spartans. 
As    soon    as    the    treaties    were    ratified    in    387,    the 

Spartans,  using  the  name  of  Artaxerxes  as  a  bugbear,  could 

,  ,   „  deal  as  they  chose  with  many  of  the  Greek  cities 

(i)  387-379.  J  J 

Ascendency  on  the  mainland  of  Europe.  They  destroyed 
°mSnarthe  Mantineia,  broke  up  a  well  managed  confederacy 
terrestrial  of  cities  in  Chalkidike  near  Macedonia,  which 
had  been  formed  under  the  presidency  of 
Olynthus,  and  in  382  captured  the  citadel  of  Thebes  by 
treachery.  But  in  379  some  Theban  patriots,  by  means  of  a 
plot  devised  by  Pelopidas,  recovered  their  acropolis,  and 
thenceforward    the  Greek  cities,  even  in  their   miserable 

1  Xen.,Hell.,5.  1.  32-34. 


chap,  xi.]  THEBES  129 

condition  of  exhaustion,  were  able  to  prevent  the  Spartans 
from  committing  any  gross  acts  of  oppression.1 

After  the  Thebans  had  recovered  their  citadel  and  their 
independence  in  379  B.C.,  the  Greek  cities  formed  a  general 
coalition  for  reducing  the  power  of  Sparta,  and 
for    seven    years  acted   together   harmoniously   Destruction 
towards  that  purpose.     The  coalition  comprised   of  the  P°wer 

,  .  of  Sparta. 

both  terrestrial  and  maritime  powers.  Of  the 
powers  on  land  Thebes  was  the  strongest :  among  the 
maritime  powers  Athens,  on  giving  a  solemn  promise  not  to 
repeat  its  old  injustice  of  taking  lands  from  other  cities  to 
found  Kleruchise,  was  able  to  establish  a  confederation  of 
maritime  cities.2  At  the  end  of  seven  years  Thebes  and  the 
other  cities  of  Greece  broke  asunder.  Athens  and  all  the 
lesser  cities  both  on  the  sea  and  on  the  land  were  jealous  of 
the  growing  power  of  Thebes,  and  in  371  B.C.  by  making 
peace  with  Sparta  they  left  the  Thebans  to  contend  against 
the  Spartans  single  handed.  The  Thebans,  within  three 
weeks  of  the  day  when  they  were  deserted  by  their  allies, 
showed  by  defeating  the  Spartans  at  the  great  battle 
of  Leuktra,  not  far  from  Thebes,  that  they  were  not  unequal 
to  their  task. 

The  Athenians  could  not  oppose  the  Thebans,  for  in  366 
or  365  B.C.  they  destroyed  the  confederation  of  maritime 
cities  by  the  same  sort  of  conduct  as  they  had  Great  power 
adopted  in  the  days  of  their  maritime  ascend-  of  Thebes, 
ency.  They  conquered  Samos  and  the  Thracian  Chersonesus, 
and  breaking  their  promise  made  in  378  B.C.  took  lands  in 
them  to  establish  new  Kleruchias :  and,  though  Samos  and 
the  Chersonesus  were  not  members  of  the  league,  the  con- 
federates were  alarmed  at  the  breach  of  faith  committed  by 

1  Plutarch,  Pelopidas,  7-12. 

2  For  the  promise,  see  tlio  inscription  printed  in  Grote,  Hist,  of  Greece, 
octavo  ed.,  1862,  vol.  7.  p.  91.  For  the  new  confederation,  Diodorus, 
15.  29. 

I 


130  GKEEK  CITIES  [chap.  xi. 

the  Athenians  and  the  confederation  was  gradually  broken 
up.1  Thus  from  the  battle  of  Leuktra  for  nine  years 
onwards  Thebes  was  decidedly  the  strongest  of  the  Hellenic 
cities,  and  for  the  first  time  in  Greek  history  the  leading 
city  did  not  abuse  its  opportunities.  The  Thebans  were 
guided  by  their  statesman  Epameinondas,  who  laboured  to 
prevent  the  oppression  of  Greeks  by  Greeks :  and  after  362, 
when  he  was  slain  in  winning  the  battle  of  Mantineia,  none 
of  the  Greek  cities  was  able  to  domineer  over  its  fellows. 
But  jealousies  among  the  enfeebled  cities  were  no  less  pro- 
nounced than  they  had  been  in  the  days  of  their  strength : 
and  within  thirty  years  after  the  battle  of  Mantineia  common 
action  of  the  Greek  cities  was  found  to  be  impossible, 
though  nothing  but  common  action  could  enable  them  to 
retain  their  independence. 

Ever  since   I   spoke   of  the   expedition   of  Xerxes   into 

Europe  in  480,  and  of  the  combined  resistance  offered  to 

him  in  477  by  the  Greeks,  the  relations  of  Greek 

Individual 

Greek  cities,  cities  to  one  another  have  been  so  engrossing 
AV bc"  as  to  ^eave  no  Mention  free  for  considering  any 
Greek  city  except  Athens  as  an  individual :  and 
even  in  regard  to  Athens  I  have  not  gone  beyond  406  in 
portraying  its  character.  It  is  now  my  intention  to  sketch 
as  individuals  those  Greek  cities  which  retained  their 
independence  after  477,  in  so  far  as  this  has  not  yet  been 
done  and  can  be  done  within  a  moderate  compass. 

In  477,  as  we  have  already  seen,  a  large  majority  of  the 
Greek  cities  forfeited  their  independence,  though  it  may  be 
that  till  454  it  was  not  universally  recognised  that  they 
were  dependent  on  another  city.  After  those  dates  the 
only   Greek   cities    that    remained    in    plenary   enjoyment 

1  For  the  date  of  the  Kleruohia  in  Samos  see  Diod.  18.  18,  last  words. 
The  rest  of  the  evidence  about  the  maritime  league  and  its  dissolution  is 
too  intripate  to  state  in  a  note.  It  is  discussed  by  Grote,  chapters  79» 
and  80, 


chap,  xi.]  SPARTA  131 

of  independence  were  perhaps  Athens  and  Sparta.     Those 
peoples  which  at  most  times  retained  such  independence 
that  they  could  choose  whether  they  would  be  states 
allies   of  Athens   or  of  Sparta  were    found  in  having  some 
Corinth,  Megara,  Epidaurus,  Sikyon,  Bceotia:  a   ence  after 
nearer  approach  to  complete  independence  was  477  BC- 
made  by  Achaia,  Argos,  and  Kerkyra,  which  were  strong 
enough  at  most  times  to  refuse  if  they  thought  fit  to  act 
in  alliance  with  either  of  the  leading  Greek  powers. 

In  considering  the  internal  circumstances  of  the  Greek 
cities  which  retained  independence  after  454,  we  begin  with 
Sparta.     The  new  phenomena  in  the  government  _ 

1  ■  °  Governments 

of  Sparta  were  these.     Within  a  short  time  after   of  Greek 
the  Peloponnesian  war  had  ended  in  404,  most   g1  qS'^ 
of  the  Helots  in  Lacedsemonia  were  in  possession   B.C.   Lace- 
of  their  freedom,   and   inequalities  had   arisen 
among  the  Spartiatte  themselves. 

The  Helots  gained  their  freedom  from  compulsory  labour 
by  becoming  acquainted  with  military  operations.  The  first 
occasion  on  which  they  saw  fighting  was  the  The  Helots 
campaign  of  479  which  ended  in  the  battle  of  479  B.c- 
Plataea.  In  that  campaign  the  five  thousand  4 
Spartiatss  who  went  out  to  contend  with  the  Persians  under 
Mardonius  took  with  them  a  large  number  of  Helots,  which 
Herodotus,  possibly  with  some  exaggeration,  sets  down  at 
thirty  five  thousand.  It  is  probable  that  they  adopted  this 
course  much  more  because  they  were  afraid  to  leave  the 
Helots  at  home  unwatched  than  because  they  intended 
them  to  be  useful  in  fighting:  but  it  may  readily  be 
imagined  that  the  Helots  observed  how  greatly  they  out- 
numbered their  owners.  About  467  the  Helots  got  some 
hopes  of  support  from  the  traitor  Pausanias,  deputy  king  of 
Sparta:  but  his  treason  was  discovered  and  their  hopes 
came  to  nothing. 


132  EMANCIPATION  [chap.  xt. 

In  464  b.c,  as  we  have  already  observed,1  the  best  of  the 
Helots  fortified  themselves  on  Mount  Ithome,  and  within 

ten  years  were  able  to  depart  from  the  Pelopon- 
emancipa-  nesus  as  free  men.  After  these  brave  men  were 
Hdotethe  g°ne>  fche  Spartans  still  had  plenty  of  Helots  left. 
464  B.C.-         In  the  early  part  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  they 

employed  some  of  them  as  soldiers,  though  they 
distrusted  them :  in  the  eighth  year  of  the  war,  being  afraid 
of  their  prowess,  they  induced  two  thousand  of  them  to 
come  forward  to  receive  emancipation  as  a  reward  of  good 
service,  but  they  perfidiously  murdered  them.2  The 
exigencies  of  the  war,  however,  compelled  them  to  employ 
more  and  more  Helots  in  fighting,  and  from  421  b.c.  they 
emancipated  them  in  good  faith.3  The  men  raised  from 
serfdom  did  not  become  Periceki,  but  were  known  as 
Neodamodeis,  or  men  resembling  new  commoners.4  When 
the  war  ended  in  404,  it  is  probable  that  few  of  the 
Messenians  remained  in  serfdom :  for  from  that  .  time 
forward  we  do  not  read  that  the  Spartiatse  were  constantly 
employed  in  watching  their  bondmen. 

In  the  days  of  the  war  against  Xerxes  the  Spartiatse  were 
equals  with  one  another,  because  all  had  the  same  privileges 

and    the    same    duties.      The    privileges    of    a 

Inequalities  ... 

among:  the  Spartan  consisted  in  being  supplied  with  Helots 
Spartiatae.      W^Q  ^T0Y[^e^  bjm  Yrith.  produce  from  his  land 

for  the  support  of  his  family,  in  being  fed  at  the  public  mess 
table,  in  being  trained  to  efficiency  as  a  soldier  and  a  police- 
man, and  in  taking  part  in  the  meetings  of  the  assembly 
which  were  held  every  year  for  the  election  of  ephors,  and 
on  rare  occasions  for  decision  of  a  matter  of  policy:  his 
duties  were  comprised  in  an  obligation  to  pay  his  share  of 
the  cost  of  the  common  mess  tables,  and  to  conform  gener- 

1  See  page  90.  2  Thucvdides,  4.  80. 

3  Ibid.,  5.  34  and  67,  7.  19  and  58,  8.  5.  *  Ibid.,  7.  58. 


chap,  xl]  OF  THE  HELOTS  133 

ally  to  the  Spartan  customs.  The  equality  of  the  Spartiatse 
depended  on  the  observance  by  the  government  of  their 
privileges,  and  on  their  own  performance  of  their  duties. 
Six  years  after  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  equality 
among  them  was  a  thing  of  the  past:  for  at  that  time  a 
large  number  of  them  were  known  as  Hypomeiones,  or 
Inferiors,  in  contrast  with  the  Homoioi,  or  Peers.1  The 
inequality  must  have  arisen  from  some  withdrawal  of 
privileges  or  from  some  neglect  of  duties,  or  from  both 
causes  combined.  Aristotle  tells  us  that  any  Spartan  who 
ceased  to  pay  his  contribution  for  keeping  up  the  public 
mess  lost  all  his  privileges,  and  that  many  in  his  time  had 
thus  been  disfranchised : 2  and  hence  we  may  safely  infer 
that  the  Inferiors  were  Spartans  who  could  not  pay. 

But  we  may  perhaps  go  a  step  further  back  and  assign  a 
probable  reason  for  the  impoverishment  of  the  Inferiors. 
It  may  be  that  in  consequence  of  emancipations  causes  of 
during  the  war  there  were  not  enough  Helots  "^quality, 
left  to  furnish  all  the  Spartiatae  with  slave  labour  for  the 
support  of  their  families.  The  inequality  arising  from  the 
impoverishment  of  the  Inferiors  was  aggravated  by  the 
success  of  those  Peers  who  were  employed  as  harmosts  in 
amassing  large  fortunes :  and  in  398  B.C.  or  397  B.C.  a  con- 
spiracy against  the  ruling  class  of  the  Peers  was  set  on  foot 
by  an  Inferior  named  Kinadon  and  was  joined  by  many 
Helots,  Neodamodeis,  and  Perioeki.3  The  conspiracy  was 
discovered  and  its  authors  punished. 

After  the  suppression  of  the  conspirators,  the  Lace- 
daemonians for  nearly  forty  years  allowed  their  foreign 
policy  to  be  directed  mainly  by  King  Agesilaus;  but  with 
this  exception   they   were   thenceforward  ruled  by  such  a 

1  Xenophon,  Hellenica,  3.  3.  5  and  6. 

2  Arist.,  Pol.,  2.  9.  31  and  32  (Bekker,  1837)  =  1271a.  1.  34. 

3  Xen.,  Hell.,  3.  3.  5  and  6. 


134  DECLINE  [chap.  xi. 

class  government  as  was  universal  in  the  commercial  Greek 
cities.  The  governing  class  consisted  of  those  few  who  were 
„.  rich  enough  to  subscribe  to  the  mess:   and  it 

Government  0 

of  Sparta  was  so  thoroughly  wanting  in  public  spirit  and 
ter398B.c.  p0i£t£caj  discrimination  that  by  about  335  B.C., 
when  Aristotle  wrote  his  Politics,  the  Lacedaemonians  had 
only  an  army  of  one  thousand  hoplites,  though  their  country 
could  have  furnished  thirty  thousand,  and  they  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  choose  competent  men  to  rule  them  as 
ephors.1 

It  is,  I  believe,  impossible  to  know  with  certainty  what 

causes  produced  the  deterioration  of  the  Spartan  common- 

•    wealth  in   the   period   after   the   Peloponnesian 

decline  at        war-     The  great  symptom  that  announced  the 

Sparta  deterioration  was  the  concentration  of  all  political 

obscure.  . 

power  in  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  Peers, 
who  were  by  far  too  few  to  exercise  it  well,  and  were  not  the 
only  class  in  the  Spartan  territory  fitted  by  their  character 
to  be  entrusted  with  political  influence.  In  short,  the 
symptom  of  decline  was  the  success  of  the  Peers  in  exclud- 
ing the  Inferiors,  the  Periceki,  and  the  Neodamodeis  from 
political  privileges. 

The  reason  why  they  were  able  to  exclude  the  Neo- 
damodeis from  all  share  of  influence  may  perhaps  be 
guessed.  The  Neodamodeis  were  descended  from  Helots, 
whom  Spartiatse  of  older  generations  had  hated  and 
despised,  and  who  had  hated  and  feared  the  Spartiatse. 
The  Periceki,  who  were  probably  the  most  numerous  and 
physically  the  strongest  class  in  Lacedsemonia,  might,  even 
though  they  resented  their  own  exclusion  from  influence, 
see  that  it  would  be  dangerous  to  extend  political  citizenship 
to  the  Neodamodeis,  and  thus  they  might  help  the  Spartiatse 

1  Arist.,  Pol,  1270a  and  12706  =  2.  9.  16  and  2.  9.  19-21  in  ed.  of  Bekker, 
Oxford,  1837. 


chap,  xi.]  OF  SPARTA  135 

to  keep  them  out  of  it.  But  why  the  Spartiatae  were  able 
to  insist  that  the  Periceki  should  have  no  political  privileges 
I  do  not  understand :  the  reason  may  lie  hid  in  some  facts 
connected  with  the  original  conquest  of  the  Periceki  by  the 
Spartans  about  which  we  have  no  information  and  can  make 
no  plausible  guesses.  The  reason  why  the  Peers,  now  the 
only  fully  qualified  Spartiatae,  succeeded  in  excluding  the 
Inferiors  from  taking  part  in  the  government  is  even  harder 
to  imagine :  for  the  common  mess  tables  and  the  training 
of  the  Spartiatse  were  of  no  political  utility,  since  the 
Spartiatse  were  reduced  in  numbers  and  were  not  sent  on 
foreign  expeditions  and  had  no  dangerous  body  of  Helots 
to  watch.  It  may  be,  however,  that  the  Inferiors  and  the 
Perioeki  and  the  Neodamodeis  were  all  willing,  after  the 
failure  of  Kinadon's  conspiracy,  to  acquiesce  in  their 
exclusion  from  political  privileges:  if  they  were  thinking 
mainly  of  getting  plunder  in  the  expeditions  of  Agesilaus 
in  foreign  lands,  they  might  form  the  opinion  that  the 
plunder  would  be  more  abundant  if  the  conduct  of  affairs 
were  left  exclusively  to  the  Peers  who  had  experience  in  the 
management  of  external  affairs. 

Next  we  turn  to  the  internal  history  of  Athens,  beginning 
at   404,  where   I   left  it.     After  the  Athenians 

....  Athens  after 

were  compelled  in  404  to  surrender  their  city  to   404  b.c. 
the    Lacedaemonians,   they    were  governed    for  (*)  Forei&° 
about  eight  months  by  thirty  Athenians  acting 
in  the  interest  of  the  Lacedsemonians,  who  are  commonly 
known  as  the  Thirty  Tyrants.     In  403  B.C.,  in  the  archon- 
ship  of  Eukleides,  they  re-established  in  its  old  form  their 
class  government  of  the  poor  citizens,  which  was  known  as 
Demokratia.1     Under  the  new  demokratia  as  under  the  old 
public  business  was  divided  into  two  parts,  one  consisting 
of  foreign  policy  and  the  conduct  of  wars,  and  the  other  of 

1  Andokides,  de.  Mysteriii,  80-91. 


136  ATHENS  [chap.  xi. 

domestic  government.     In  foreign  policy,  since  Athens  after 
404  was  for  ten  years  dependent  on  Sparta,  and  afterwards 
was  compelled  to  adopt  generally  a  defensive  attitude,  the 
ekklesia  could  not  commit  such  imprudences  as  had  led  to 
disaster  in  the   Peloponnesian  war.     Its   only  conspicuous 
folly  was  its  attempt  made  about  365  to  establish  Kleruchiae 
in  Samos  and  in  the  Thracian  Chersonesus.     Apart  from  this 
serious    error,   the  work   of    dealing  with    foreign   powers 
consisted  almost   entirely  in   accepting  such  alliances  as 
could  be  obtained,  and  in  fulfilling  the  conditions  of  the 
alliances:  and  that  work  was  performed   in  general  with 
good  sense  and  honesty.     The  conduct  of  wars,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  far  less   spirited   than   it  had  been.     The  poor 
citizens   who   ruled    the    state   were    no    longer  generally 
willing  to  serve  as  hoplites  now  that  there  was  no  chance 
of  exacting  tribute  from  any  cities,  and  from  391  onward 
the  most  effective  military  force  of  the  city  consisted  of 
foreign    mercenary   troops   who    were    equipped    as    light 
infantry,  and  from  their  small  targets  were  called  Peltastse. 
In  regard   to  the  internal  government  of  Athens  from 
403  to  360  we  possess  no  narrative,  and  can  only  get  some 
(2)  Domestic    indications  from  speeches  composed  by  the  orator 
government.    Lysias.    From  these  speeches  I  get  an  impression 
that  Demokratia  of  the  Athenian  type  was  too  expensive  a 
form  of  government  for   any  city  that  had  not  external 
tribute   at   command  for   giving   pay  to   its  poor  citizens. 
This  impression   is    confirmed    by  what   we  know   about 
Athenian  finance.     From   425   to  415   when   the   revenue 
stood   at  its    highest  point,   the   city  received  nominally 
twelve  hundred,  and  actually  about  nine  hundred,  talents  of 
tribute  in  every  year,  and  the  whole  revenue  was  probably 
something  less  than  two  thousand  talents.1     After  404  there 
was  no  tribute,  and  the  whole  revenue  can  hardly  have  been 

1  Gilbert,  Gr.  Staatsalterth.,  1.  399. 


chap,  xi.]  THE  LESSEE  CITIES  137 

more  than  six  or  eight  hundred  talents.  Pay  to  poor 
citizens  for  services  in  the  dikasteria,  the  five  hundred, 
and  the  ekklesia,  if  given  in  full,  would  certainly  use  up 
one  hundred  talents.  So  large  a  sum  could  not  easily  be 
found :  and  it  seems  to  be  clear  that  false  accusations  were 
constantly  brought  against  rich  men  in  order  to  replenish 
the  treasury,  and  that  the  speeches  in  which  they  were 
made  were  composed  by  Lysias  and  his  like.1 

In  regard  to  the  lesser  cities  we  know  that  Kerkyra  was 
governed  sometimes  with  great  violence  by  the  rich  citizens, 
and  on  one  occasion  in  427  with  atrocious  cruelty  by 
the  poor.2    Argos,  which  since  the  depopulation  0f  the  lesser 
of  Mykenoe  and  Tiryns  about  468  was  a  simple  cities  ^ter 

447  B.C. 

urban  community,  was  ruled  usually  by  the  poor, 
who  in  370  beat  more  than  a  thousand  of  their  opponents  to 
death  with  bludgeons.3  At  Corinth,  at  some  time  probably 
after  350,  Timophanes,  brother  of  Timoleon,  made  himself 
a  tyrannus  and  was  killed.  Beyond  these  facts  we  hear 
little  about  the  governments  in  the  lesser  cities.  But  we 
may  be  sure  that  all  of  them  were  what  I  have  called  class 
governments,  because  Aristotle  in  his  Politics,  written  about 
335,  takes  it  for  granted  that  every  government  in  a  Greek 
city  must  necessarily  be  either  Oligarchia,  or  Tyrannis,  or 
Demokratia.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  governments  in 
such  cities  as  Corinth,  Megara,  Epidaurus,  Kerkyra  were 
class  governments :  for,  although  from  the  beginning  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war  in  431  till  the  battle  of  Mantineia  in  362 
these  lesser  cities  were  frequently  engaged  in  wars  against 
other  Greek  states,  the  wars  were  not  such  as  to  make  it 
necessary  for  the  cities  to  set  up  governments  satisfactory 

1  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  d.  Alterthums,  vol.  5,  §  871,  founded  on  Lysias, 
Orations  28,  29,  27,  19,  22,  and  in  particular  on  27.  1.  Isokrates,  8.  130 
(composed  in  355  B.C.)  gives  strong  confirmation. 

2  Thucydides,  3.  70-81. 

3  Diodorus,  15.  58. 


138  GREEK  [chap.  XL 

to  all  classes  of  the  citizens,  and  capable  of  evoking  vigorous 
patriotic  action.  The  lesser  cities  only  engaged  in  wars  as 
underlings  to  more  powerful  allies :  there  was,  therefore,  no 
need  for  their  governments  to  conciliate  the  citizens  in  order 
to  induce  them  to  serve  willingly  as  soldiers  or  officers  in 
their  armies,  since  the  powerful  allies  whom  they  followed 
in  war  were  ready  to  support  the  governments  with  force 
and  to  insist  that  the  troops  that  they  required  must  be 
forthcoming. 

While    the    Greek    communities    and    especially    those 

communities  that  were  concentrated  in  commercial  cities 

were  showing  their  inability  to  deal  wisely  with 

intelligence     ^he  more  difficult  problems  of  statesmanship,  the 

of  individual    Greeks  as  individual  men,  and  especially  those  of 

Greeks 

in  the  them  who  lived  in  commercial  cities,  attained  to 

commercial      intellectual  excellence  such  as  has  never  been 

cities.  . 

approached  by  men  of  any  other  race.  It  is 
perhaps  in  all  cases  impossible  to  go  more  than  a  little  way 
towards  guessing  how  any  race  of  men  got  its  intellectual 
qualities :  in  the  case  of  the  Greeks  our  chances  of  going  far 
in  that  direction  are  diminished  by  the  fact  that  Greek 
history  before  650  B.C.  does  not  exist.  But  we  can  observe 
what  intellectual  qualities  were  common  to  all  the  Greeks,  and 
which  were  peculiar  to  some  of  them.  Vivid  imagination 
and  a  love  of  poetry  appear  to  have  been  common  to  all  the 
race.  Picturesque  legends  of  gods  or  heroes  grew  abundantly 
everywhere:  even  the  comparatively  stolid  Boeotians  pro- 
duced Pindar,  and  the  Spartans  valued  Tyrtaeus.  But 
artistic  taste,  literary  skill,  and  philosophic  acumen  were 
found  only  in  the  commercial  cities,  and  rose  to  their 
greatest  excellence  in  Athens:  among  those  Greeks  whose 
pursuits  were  agricultural  or  military  they  were  not  present. 
It  is  possible  to  see  vaguely  why  much  keen  intellect  was 
produced  in  the  Greek  commercial  cities,  and  why  it  was 


chap,  xi.]  INTELLECT  139 

not  employed  largely   on   the   work  of  government.      In 
every  commercial  city  the  citizens  sharpen  their  wits  on 
the  wits  of  their  fellow  citizens,  and  gain  quicker 
intellects  than  country  folk  are  likely  to  have,   of  political 
But  in  the  Greek  commercial   cities  the  work  pu^nesf 

in  Greek 

of  government  was  not  so  serious  or  so  attractive  commercial 

to  men  of  great  mental  power  as  it  has  been  in 

the  larger  bodies  politic  of  later  times.     The  commercial 

cities  had  very  small  territories,  they  possessed  generally  an 

immunity  from  fear  of  conquest,  they  very  seldom  made 

voluntary  alliances,  and  they  did  not  govern  any  subjects 

outside  their  own  narrow  limits.     Hence  it  is  probable  that 

the  citizens  of  an  ordinary  Greek  commercial  city  were  from 

long  custom  almost  as  incapable  of  taking  effective  interest 

in  events  outside  their  own  city  walls  as  the  citizens  of 

Florence  in  the  fourteenth  century  after  the  Christian  era, 

or  of  Ghent  in  the  fifteenth.1     Plato  in  his  Republic  and 

Aristotle  in  his  Politics,  while   treating  of  the  aims  and 

characters  of  governments,  trouble  themselves  very  little  or 

not  at  all  about  the  qualifications  of  different  governments 

for  good  management  of  foreign  policy. 

It  is  true  that  Athens,  especially  from  510  to  431,  was  not 

an  ordinary  purely  commercial  city.     Attica  between  510 

and  479  was  attacked  four  times  by  Greeks  and   „.     ... 

J  .  Directions 

twice  by  Persians,  and   afterwards   the  city  of  in  which 
Athens  was   for    many   years  occupied  in   the   Pf ef. . 

J     J  t  intelligence 

hazardous   work   of  exacting   tribute  from   the   was  chiefly 

maritime   cities  in  opposition  to  the  wishes  of  empoye 

all  the  Greeks;  and  accordingly  between  510  and  431  the 

work  of  practical  political  life  did  prove  attractive  to  some 

of  the  very  ablest  men  in  the  city,  as  Kleisthenes,  Themisto- 

kles,   and  Perikles.     But  even  then   in  Athens   only  one 

first  rate  man  was  wanted  at  a  time,  and  if  two  chanced  to 

1  Commines,  Mdmoires,  5.  15  and  16. 


140  INTELLIGENCE  BANISHED  FROM      [chap.  xi. 

be  present  a  vote  with  potsherds  was  taken,  and  one  of  them 
was  banished  for  ten  years.  Hence  nearly  all  the  men  of 
ability,  who  were  very  abundant,  turned  their  attention 
away  from  practical  politics  to  the  construction  of  theories, 
to  imagination,  and  to  the  production  of  things  of  beauty. 
In  the  commercial  cities  other  than  Athens  able  statesmen 
were  superfluous,  and,  if  present,  were  made  to  feel  that  they 
were  out  of  place:  for  in  those  cities  the  ruling  class, 
whether  it  consisted  exclusively  of  the  rich  or  exclusively  of 
the  poor,  governed  collectively  for  the  protection  of  its  own 
interests,  and  was  careful  that  no  man  of  ability  should  rise 
to  higher  influence  than  was  enjoyed  by  men  of  only 
ordinary  understanding:  in  Athens  from  431,  when  the 
whole  population  was  crowded  into  the  city,  the  policy  of 
preventing  men  who  combined  genius  with  high  moral 
character  from  getting  influence  in  any  part  of  the  home 
government  was  carried  out  with  extreme  rigour.  Hence  the 
men  of  genius  in  the  commercial  cities  generally  were  not 
employed  in  practical  politics,  and  had  leisure  to  employ 
their  wits  as  they  would:  in  Athens  the  men  of  ordinary 
intelligence  also  had  leisure,  because  very  few  of  them 
worked  to  earn  a  livelihood ;  and  in  every  Greek  commercial 
city  the  average  of  intellect  for  everything  that  was  not 
practical  stood  at  a  wonderfully  high  level.  In  Athens, 
where  wits  were  most  acute,  the  ordinary  citizens  took  their 
pastimes  in  talking,  jesting,  arguing:  their  public  duties 
made  them  good  judges  of  oratory  in  the  dikasteria  and  in 
the  ekklesia,  and  of  dramatic  art  at  the  religious  festivals. 
The  men  of  genius  were  producers  of  things  of  beauty  and 
enlightenment;  and  they  have  left  to  mankind  jewels  that 
last  for  ever  in  their  buildings,  their  statues,  and  their 
painted  vases,  together  with  the  still  more  precious  treasures 
of  their  poetry,  their  oratory,  their  histories,  their  mathe- 
matics, and  their  philosophy. 


chap,  xi.]  PRACTICAL  POLITICS  141 

IV.  362  B.c-338  B.C.    isolation  of  the  greek  states 

AND  THE  END  OF  THEIR  INDEPENDENCE 

From  the  year  358  B.C.  the  Greek  cities  were  hastening 
to  disaster.  Philip  had  then  been  King  of  Macedonia  for 
about  a  year:  his  army  was  far  stronger  than  any  that 
could  be  found  in  Greece,  and  he  began  to  interfere  in 
Greek  affairs.  The  Greek  cities  were  too  jealous  of  one 
another  to  join  in  resisting  him,  and  their  citizens  would 
not  serve  as  soldiers.  In  338  B.C.  he  won  the  battle  of 
Chseroneia  in  Bceotia :  and  from  that  time  to  about  251  B.C. 
all  the  Greek  cities  were  obliged  to  obey  the  orders  of 
Macedonian  masters  in  regard  to  foreign  policy,  though 
they  were  usually  permitted,  if  they  were  submissive  in 
regard  to  external  affairs,  to  manage  their  internal  govern- 
ment for  themselves. 

The  history  of  the  Greeks  in  Italy  and  Sicily  presents 
many  points  of  interest  and  of  contrast  with  the  history  of 
the  eastern   Greeks.      Italy  and  Sicily  are  not 
naturally    divided   into    areas  so    small    or    so   mentsin 
defensible  as  the  natural  divisions  of  Hellas.   Italyand 

Sicily. 

Hence  a  Greek  settlement  in  Italy  or  Sicily 
often  had  a  large  territory  in  which  it  had  first  to  contend 
with  the  uncivilised  natives  and  then  to  control  them.  It 
had  room  to  plant  many  smaller  towns  with  Greek  in- 
habitants besides  the  capital  city :  and  as  it  had  no  strong 
natural  boundaries  it  might  have  to  defend  its  territory 
from  attack  by  any  neighbouring  community  of  Greeks. 
Hence  the  government  of  a  Greek  city  in  Italy  or  Sicily 
needed  to  conciliate  all  classes  of  its  subjects  in  order 
that  they  might  be  willing  to  fight  zealously.  The  govern- 
ments of  the  Italiot  and  Sikeliot  cities  before  500  B.C.  were 
indeed  generally  oligarchic :  but  in  many  of  the  cities  they 
were    what    Henry  Sidgwick    well    calls    broad-bottomed 


142  SICILIAN  GREEKS  [chap.  xi. 

oligarchies.1  In  Rhegium  and  Kroton  the  government  was 
vested  in  a  large  body  of  the  well-to-do  citizens  commonly 
called  The  Thousand:  in  Syracuse  the  rulers  were  the 
Gamoroi,  or  land  sharers,  the  heirs  of  the  men  who  had 
received  lots  of  land  soon  after  the  city  was  founded.2  In 
Sicily  the  Greeks  from  480  B.C.  onward  were  exposed  to 
the  peril  of  terrible  Carthaginian  invasions:  and  hence 
Syracuse  had  four  patriotic  tyranni,  Gelon,  Hieron  the 
First,  Dionysius  the  Elder,  and  Hieron  the  Second ;  and 
also  a  patriotic  Demokratia,  founded  and  fostered  by 
Timoleon. 

But  we  have  no  continuous  narrative  of  the  fortunes  of 
the  cities  in  Italy  and  Sicily :  after  about  500  B.C.  we  know 
ji  ,    ,  very  little  of  the  Italiot  cities,  and  before  that 

Obstacles  to  J 

complete  date  we  know  almost  nothing  about  Sicily. 
Greek°cities  Beyond  this  the  history  of  the  Sikeliot  towns, 
in  Italy  and  even  if  we  knew  it,  would  be  found  to  be  dis- 
continuous. Between  493  B.C.  and  467  B.C.  the 
lives  of  many  Sikeliot  peoples  were  ended  by  their  violent 
transplantation:  and  the  Syracusan  people  itself,  which  is 
by  far  the  best  known  of  them,  suffered  nothing  less  than 
a  transformation  into  a  new  people,  when  between  485  B.C. 
and  480  B.C.  Gelon  brought  into  it  large  bodies  of  immi- 
grants from  neighbouring  cities  and  added  to  its  citizens 
ten  thousand  of  his  mercenary  soldiers.  It  is  true  that  in 
461  B.C.  the  Greeks  in  Sicily  tried  to  undo  the  work  done 
by  Gelon  and  his  brother  Hieron ;  but  I  cannot  believe  that 
they  could  bring  back  the  Greek  communities  to  what  they 
had  been.  In  consequence  of  the  scantiness  of  our  informa- 
tion and  of  the  intrinsic  difficulty  of  the  task,  I  do  not 
attempt  to  make  a  consecutive  story  of  the  doings  and 
fortunes  of  the  Greeks  in  Italy  and  Sicily. 

1  Sidgwick,  Development  of  the  European  Polity,  p.  95. 
8  Smith,  Diet.  Oeogr.  ;  'Rhegium,'  'Croton,'  '  Syracuse.' 


chap,  xi.]      ARISTOTELIAN  NOMENCLATURE  H3 

Three  years  after  the  Greek  cities  lost  their  independence, 
Aristotle  published  his  treatise  on  Politics.  It  is  not  my 
intention  to  attempt  a  general  discussion  of  this  .  .  .  .  u 
great  work ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  nomencia- 
that  Aristotle  gave  new  meanings  to  the  terms  ure' 
oligarchia,  tyrannis,  and  demokratia,  and  that,  if  we  do  not 
discriminate  between  the  Aristotelian  senses  of  these  words 
and  those  in  which  they  were  employed  by  the  Greeks  before 
his  time,  we  shall  be  led  into  making  blunders  about 
Greek  history.  Till  Aristotle  wrote  the  Politics,  oligarchia, 
tyrannis,  and  demokratia  were  popular  terms  with  meanings 
determined  solely  by  somewhat  superficial  observation  of 
facts,  and  they  did  not  necessarily  imply  any  attribution 
of  blame  or  praise.  The  words  tyrannis  and  demokratia 
were  used  without  perceptible  variation  of  meaning :  tyrannis 
was  the  absolute  rule  of  a  usurper,  whether  gentle  or  oppres- 
sive ;  demokratia  was  the  collective  rule  of  all  the  citizens, 
and  therefore  practically  of  the  poor  who  always  had  a 
numerical  majority  of  the  votes,  whether  that  rule  was  just 
or  unjust.  Oligarchia  denoted,  as  its  derivation  indicates, 
the  rule  of  few,  or  the  rule  of  any  number  of  men  who  were 
but  a  fraction  of  the  whole  body  of  citizens.  The  word  then 
was  applied  indifferently  to  the  rule  of  a  group  of  princes, 
or  of  a  cla^s  of  nobles,  or  of  rich  men,  or  to  the  domination 
of  a  small  gang  of  murderous  conspirators,  and  it  was 
applied  equally  to  the  good  rule  or  the  bad  rule  of  a  small 
group  of  men.  Aristotle  tried  to  turn  the  popular  words 
tyrannis,  demokratia,  and  oligarchia  into  scientific  terms  by 
defining  them :  and  he  got  his  definitions  not  so  much  from 
an  improved  observation  of  facts  as  from  two  axioms,  or 
statements  which  he  deemed  to  be  incontrovertible.  His 
axioms  were  these:  (1)  in  every  city  supreme  power  is 
lodged  in  the  hands  either  of  one  man,  or  of  the  few 
rich,  or  of  the  many  poor ;  (2)  every  government  is  conducted 


144  AEISTOTELIAN  [chap.  xi. 

either  for   the  welfare  of  the  whole  community  under  it, 
or  for  the  selfish  interest  of  the  ruler  or  rulers. 

Hence  Aristotle  deduced  the  following  conclusions 
Governments  are  divided  into  two  great  classes:  firstly, 
those  conducted  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole 
classification  community,  which  he  calls  normal  or  right 
of  govern-  polities ;  secondly,  those  managed  for  the  selfish 
interests  of  the  rulers,  which  he  calls  perversions 
of  the  right  polities.  Further,  each  of  the  two  classes  is 
divided  into  three  species.  Among  the  normal  polities  the 
rule  of  one  for  the  common  weal  is  Basileia,  or  Kingship: 
the  rule  of  the  few  best  for  the  best  results  to  the  com- 
munity is  Aristokratia :  the  rule  of  the  many  poor  for  the 
good  of  all  is  Polity,  which  bears  in  a  laudatory  sense  the 
name  common  to  all  the  sorts  of  governments.  In  like 
manner  among  the  perversions,  the  rule  of  one  for  his 
selfish  interest  is  Tyrannis,  the  perversion  of  kingship: 
the  selfish  rule  of  the  few  rich  is  Oligarchia,  and  the  rule 
of  the  many  poor  for  the  interest  of  their  class  is  Demo- 
kratia.  Thus  Aristotle  introduced  into  the  meanings  of 
Tyrannis,  Oligarchia,  and  Demokratia  an  element  of  re- 
probation, which  was  not  present  in  the  minds  of  the 
earlier  Greeks  when  they  made  use  of  the  words :  and  he 
omitted  from  the  meaning  of  Tyrannis  the  implication  of 
a  usurpation  which  in  its  current  use  it  conveyed. 

We  are  now  compelled  to  examine  whether  Aristotle's 
definitions  contain  truthful  descriptions  of  Greek  govern- 
ments at  all  parts  of  Greek  history  alike  :  and  it 

Comments.  •  i  i  •     ^ 

may  be  convenient  though  not  strictly  necessary 
to  form  a  provisional  notion  whether  his  terminology  is 
likely  to  be  useful  if  applied  to  governments  that  have 
occurred  in  other  lands  than  Greece.  It  is  manifest  that  de- 
finitions derived  from  axioms  will  give  truthful  descriptions 
only  of  those  objects   concerning   which   the   axioms  are 


chap,  xi.]  CLASSIFICATION  145 

strictly  true.  In  regard  to  the  greater  part  of  the  govern- 
ments that  meet  us  in  European  history  outside  of  Greece, 
both  the  axioms  that  Aristotle  laid  down  are  obviously 
untrue.  It  is  a  rare  occurrence  if,  in  a  body  politic  much 
larger  than  a  Greek  city,  we  discover  a  government  con- 
ducted either  exclusively  by  the  few  rich  or  exclusively  by 
the  many  poor.  We  do  indeed  find  in  the  large  bodies 
politic,  whenever  they  are  in  danger  of  falling  in  pieces  or 
are  waging  great  aggressive  wars,  that  they  are  governed 
exclusively  by  a  single  man :  but  under  all  other  circum- 
stances their  governments  are  made  up  out  of  a  combination 
of  the  rule  of  the  one  and  the  few,  or  of  the  rule  of  the  one, 
the  few,  and  the  many.  And  again  in  history  taken  at  large 
it  is  unusual  to  find  a  government  that  is  entirely  public- 
spirited  or  entirely  selfish :  most  governing  bodies  rule  partly 
for  the  common  weal  and  partly  for  their  own  interest.  There 
is  then  no  presumption  that  the  Aristotelian  terminology  will 
be  useful  if  it  is  applied  to  the  large  states  outside  of  Greek 
history :  there  is  rather  a  presumption  that  it  will  be  mis- 
leading. In  regard  to  the  polities  which  he  calls  normal  his 
conclusions  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  unsound,  since  he  confesses 
that  he  does  not  know  any  instance  of  Basileia  or  of  Aristo- 
kratia,  and  he  does  not  explicitly  mention  more  than  one 
example  of  Polity  that  can  be  identified  with  a  government 
of  which  we  have  any  historical  knowledge  beyond  the 
scanty  information  that  we  obtain  from  Aristotle.1 

But  to  go  back  to  Greek  history.  Even  if  we  confine  our 
attention  to  Greek  bodies  politic,  which  alone  were  well 

1  The  one  example  is  found  in  the  government  of  Syracuse  in  415  B.C. , 
immediately  before  the  city  was  attacked  by  the  Athenians.  From  Arist. 
Pol.  5.  4.  9  we  learn  that  the  government  of  Syracuse  at  that  time  was  a 
Polity.  From  Thucydides,  5.  41.  1  we  learn  that  the  chief  organ  in  the 
government  was  a  popular  assembly  ;  but  the  strategi  had  the  power  to  order 
an  assembly  to  disperse,  and  from  Thuc.  5.  41.  4  we  see  that  an  order  to 
disperse  given  by  a  strategus  was  promptly  obeyed.  No  strategua  could 
have  dared  to  give  such  an  order  in  a  demokrat ia. 

K 


146  ARISTOTELIAN  [chap.  xi. 

kuown  to  Aristotle,  we  find  that  his  axioms  are  true,  not 
of  all  Greek  bodies  politic,  but  only  of  many.  Take  first 
Aristotle's  his  axiom  that  in  every  body  politic  power  must 
first  axiom,  belong  to  one,  or  to  the  few,  or  to  the  many. 
This  axiom  was  true  of  many  Greek  bodies  politic :  for  at 
all  times  in  Greek  history  the  lesser  commercial  cities  were 
ruled  by  a  person  or  a  class,  and  in  the  time  when  Aristotle 
wrote  Macedonia  was  governed  by  a  hereditary  king  who 
had  become  practically  a  despot.  But  at  all  times  in  Greek 
history  there  were  bodies  politic  for  which  the  axiom  was 
untrue :  among  them  were  in  the  time  of  Aristotle  the 
federations  of  the  Achseans,  the  Phokians,  the  Akarnanians, 
the  ^Etolians,  and  the  Boeotians :  in  earlier  times  before 
460  B.C.  the  larger  cities  Athens  and  Argos,  and  all  those 
bodies  politic  which,  like  the  Spartans,  were  employed  in 
military  or  agricultural  pursuits  and  not  in  commerce. 

Then  for  the  second  axiom  which  asserts   that   every 
government  is  either  patriotic  or  selfish.     This  axiom,  like 

Aristotle's  ^e  *asfc'  even  ^  applied  only  to  Greek  govern- 
second  ments,  is  found  to  be  in  many  cases  untrue ;  for 
in  Greece,  as  elsewhere,  a  government  was  usually 
partly  patriotic  and  partly  selfish.  If  Aristotle  had  said 
merely  that  many  Greek  governments  were  usually  either 
in  the  main  patriotic  or  in  the  main  selfish,  his  dictum 
would  have  been  harmless  :  he  does  say  that  all  governments 
are  either  patriotic  or  selfish,  and  probably  from  a  desire  to 
make  his  classification  a  neat  logical  sequence  from  his 
axioms  goes  on  to  say  that  in  all  cases  Oligarchia,  Tyrannis, 
and  Demokratia  are  selfish  governments  conducted  with  a 
view  to  the  interests  of  the  rulers.  It  is  quite  true  that 
many  of  the  class  governments  of  the  Greeks  were  selfish, 
and  some  of  them  were  violently  oppressive  of  their  subjects ; 
the  worst  of  all  were  the  demokratiae  in  Kerkyra  in  428  B.C., 
and  in  370  B.C.  at  Argos.     But  Aristotle  accused  them  all 


chap,  xi.]  AXIOMS  147 

of  selfishness,  meaning  that  they  were  selfish  towards  their 
subjects :  for  he  never  takes  any  account  of  the  behaviour 
of  a  government  towards  foreigners. 

Aristotle  could  not  have  made  his  sweeping  condemnation 
of  all  Oligarchic,  all  Tyrannides,  and  all  Demokratise,  if  he 
had  attended  more  to  individual  instances  and 
less  to  philosophic  axioms.  In  regard  to  Olig- 
archic we  know  little:  but  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted 
that  the  broad-bottomed  oligarchies  of  Rhegium  and 
Kroton  were  compelled  by  their  circumstances  to  pay  due 
attention  to  the  interests  of  their  subjects.  Aristotle 
certainly  counted  Peisistratus  and  the  despotic  rulers  of 
Syracuse  as  tyranni :  he  says  plainly  that  he  cannot  find 
any  instance  of  Basileia,1  and  therefore  he  must  reckon  all 
absolute  rulers  as  tyranni.  Thus  when  he  asserts  that  a 
tyrannus  rules  for  his  own  selfish  interest,  he  makes  a 
statement  that  is  in  some  cases  untrue :  Peisistratus,  though 
his  power  was  absolute,  ruled  more  like  a  citizen  than  a 
despot ;  and  the  Syracusan  tyranni  bravely  defended  their 
subjects  against  the  Carthaginians.  The  poor  citizens  who 
ruled  Athens  for  a  hundred  years  did  not,  so  long  as  they 
had  the  tribute  coming  in,  oppress  their  wealthier  fellow 
citizens:  the  follies  and  cruelties  of  their  external  policy 
were  aimed  not  against  Athenians  but  against  foreigners: 
and  even  in  the  time  after  358  B.C.,  when  they  were  too 
blind  to  see  that  unless  they  consented  to  serve  in  the  army 
Athens  would  be  conquered  by  Philip,  they  themselves 
suffered  as  much  as  anybody  else  from  the  effects  of  their 
ignorance  and  apathy. 

It  is  then  a  matter  of  necessity  to  distinguish  carefully 
between  the  Aristotelian  and  the  ordinary  senses  of  the 
words  Tyrannis,  Oligarchia,  and  Demokratia,  and,  when 
we  read  of  a  tyrannis  in  Herodotus,  or  of  a  demokratia  or 

1  Aristotle,  Politics,  3.  14. 


H8  ACHAEAN  LEAGUE  [chap.  xl. 

an  oligarchia  in  Thucydides,  to  understand  the  words  in 
the  senses  which  those  authors  intended  them  to  bear,  and 
Caution  not  m  fcne  vei7  different  senses  which  Aristotle 

needed  in  afterwards  imposed  on  them.  My  task  of  de- 
Greek  poiiti-  scribing  Greek  governments  would  have  been 
cai  terms.  greatly  simplified  if  I  had  entirely  abjured  all 
mention  of  the  deceptive  words  oligarchia  and  tyrannis  and 
demokratia,  and  had,  whenever  a  description  of  a  govern- 
ment was  wanted,  employed  such  English  words  as  seemed 
best  to  suit  it :  but,  if  that  course  had  been  adopted,  I  should 
have  been  debarred  from  citing  without  explanatory  dis- 
cussion many  important  passages  from  Greek  writers  in 
which  the  words  are  employed. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  inability  of  the  Greek  bodies  politic 
to  maintain  their  independence  against  Philip  of  Macedonia 
T...    «  ..         arose  from  their  inability  or  unwillingness   to 

The  Achaean    m  J  ° 

League,  join  in  a  common  policy.  Incapacity,  however, 
251  '  "  and  aversion  for  combined  action,  did  not  con- 
tinue for  ever  to  be  characteristics  of  all  of  them.  Under 
the  supremacy  of  the  Macedonian  kings  some  bodies 
politic  in  the  Peloponnesus  underwent  such  discipline  as 
cured  them  of  their  old  habit  of  distrusting  all  their 
neighbours,  and  in  251  B.C.  they  joined  together  and 
formed  the  Achaean  League.  That  famous  confederation 
cannot  be  neglected:  but  in  order  to  avoid  needless 
repetitions  it  is  better  to  say  nothing  about  it  till  we  have 
to  consider  Federal  States. 


CHAPTER   XII 

COMMENTS   ON   THE   GREEK   CITIES   AND   GOVERNMENTS, 

477  B.c-338  b.c. 

It  has   already   been  pointed  out  in   my   eighth   chapter 
that  until  the  expedition  of  Xerxes  into  Europe  the  Greek 
communities  lived  in  political  isolation  from  one   Relations 
another,  having  no  deadly  enmities  and  no  warm   among  the 

Greek  cities 

friendships,  and  scarcely  knowing  one  another  48oB.c- 
except  through  commercial  transactions  between  4°4  BC- 
their  citizens.  An  exception  must  now  be  made  in  favour  of 
the  communities  in  the  Peloponnesus.  Since  about  560  b.c. 
the  Spartans  had  gained  control  over  some  towns  outside 
their  natural  frontiers,  as  Tegea  and  some  of  the  towns  in 
Arcadia,  and  had  directed  their  doings,  seemingly  without 
maltreating  their  inhabitants :  in  508  b.c.  they  had  gained 
a  voluntary  alliance  from  Corinth  and  probably  from  some 
other  towns  near  Corinth.  Thus  when  Xerxes  came  to 
Europe  the  Peloponnesians  were  able  to  act  together, 
without  any  great  degree  of  mutual  distrust.  But  the 
Peloponnesians  knew  very  little  about  the  Athenians,  and 
would  not  support  them  against  Xerxes  until  it  became  clear 
that  they  must  do  it  for  their  own  preservation :  and  two 
years  after  the  defeat  of  Mardonius  at  Platsea,  the  maritime 
cities  of  the  yEgean  Sea  were  so  ignorant  of  the  art  of  dealing 
with  an  external  government  that  they  surrendered  their 
independence  to  Athens  in  return  for  protection  against  the 
Persians.     After  the  year  454  nearly  all  the  Greek  cities 


150  GREEK  URBAN  GOVERNMENTS     [chap.  xii. 

were  dependent  either  on  Athens  or  on  Sparta,  and  only 
a  dozen  at  most  of  the  town  communities  remained  inde- 
pendent. But  there  appeared  one  hopeful  feature  in  Greek 
political  life  on  which  I  have  not  as  yet  laid  proper  stress : 
at  various  times  between  462  and  421  some  of  the  inde- 
pendent Greek  towns,  out  of  hatred  of  Athens,  made 
voluntary  alliances  with  Sparta,  and  it  was  quite  possible 
that  between  voluntary  allies  friendly  feelings  might  arise 
and  become  permanent. 

From  454  to  404  the  general  course  of  Greek  history  was 

determined  in  the  main  by  the  relations  between  Sparta  and 

its  dependents  and  allies,  and  between  Athens 

Sparta  and  L 

Athens  did  and  its  dependents.  First,  we  may  consider  the 
n°t.^overn  relations  of  both  Sparta  and  Athens  with  their 
dependent  dependencies.  The  most  surprising  feature  in 
those  relations  is  this:  neither  Sparta  nor 
Athens  governed  any  of  their  dependent  towns.  I  do  not 
fully  understand  why  no  Greek  town  between  454  and  404 
ever  tried  to  govern  a  dependent  town,  but  think  it  likely 
that  from  habit  the  Greeks  in  a  town  that  had  dependencies 
could  not  conceive  it  to  be  possible  that  their  own  govern- 
ment could  govern  except  in  the  town  to  which  it  was 
native,  or  that  it  could  send  a  branch  of  itself  to  govern 
elsewhere  :  and,  if  they  had  thought  of  sending  out  a  branch- 
government,  they  would  have  condemned  the  notion  as 
impracticable,  because  the  dependent  towns  would  violently 
resent  the  rule  of  foreigners.  It  was  generally  thought  by 
the  Greeks  that,  if  a  town  was  conquered,  it  must  either 
have  its  walls  razed  to  the  ground  and  be  depopulated,  as 
was  done  to  Sybaris  a  little  before  500  B.C.,  when  it  was 
conquered  by  Kroton,  or  must  be  governed  by  some  part  of 
its  own  citizens  who  could  be  trusted  to  govern  it  in  the 
interest  of  the  conquering  town. 

As  the  Spartans  and  the  Athenians  did  not  govern  their 


chap,  xil]  STRICTLY  LOCAL  151 

dependent  towns,  they  took  advantage  of  their  superiority  to 

demand  from  them  either  contingents  for  service  in  war,  or 

else  payments  of  money.     The  plan  of  requiring 

contingents  for  war  was  suitable  for  dependencies  from  them 

near  at  hand  on  the  land,  and  was  adopted  by  contingents 

.or  money. 

the  Spartans.  It  did  not  answer  so  well  with 
dependencies  beyond  the  sea,  because  those  dependencies 
could  only  furnish  ships,  and  ships  which  serve  reluctantly 
are  not  kept  to  their  duty  so  easily  as  contingents  of  soldiers 
ashore:  hence  the  Athenians  after  a  time  nearly  gave  up 
the  practice  of  demanding  contingents  from  their  depend- 
encies, and  preferred  to  take  money.  The  Spartans  treated 
their  dependents  with  some  consideration,  because  they 
wanted  to  get  their  contingents  easily  and  to  find  them 
zealous:  the  Athenians  cared  nothing  for  the  welfare  or 
contentment  of  their  dependents,  because  they  could  always 
compel  them  to  pay.  Sparta  was  an  ordinary  suzerain : 
Athens  was  both  a  suzerain  and  a  parasite. 

The  alliances  voluntarily  made  by  some  Greek  towns  with 
Sparta  between  462  and  421  did  not  succeed  in  joining  the 
towns  that  made  them  in  permanent  friendship   Aman  es 
with  the  Spartiatse.     It  is  indeed  clear  that,  till   with  Sparta 
the  great  war  between  Sparta  and  Athens  began   at  firet7 
in  431,  the  Spartans  must  have  been  careful  to  afterwards 
conciliate  the  peoples  in  alliance  with  them,  such 
as  the  Boeotians  and  the  Corinthians,  and  to  treat  them  with 
consideration :  but  after  the  war  was  on  foot  the  purposes  of 
the  Spartans  were  duly  served  by  allotting  to  their  allies 
treatment  only  a  little  less  harsh  than  those  allies  could 
expect  to  get  from  the  Athenians,  if  they  were  to  go  over  to 
the  Athenian  side.     In  421  the  Spartans  made  a  treaty  of 
peace  with  Athens  in  which  the  interests  of  their  allies  were 
neglected.     After  that  date  I  believe  they  had  no  allies  who 
helped  them  quite  voluntarily  or  regarded  them  as  friends 


152  ABSENCE  OF  STATESMANSHIP      [chap.  xii. 

who  could  be  trusted.  After  they  won  the  battle  of 
Mantineia  in  418,  they  did  indeed  keep  as  large  a  body  of 
allies  as  they  had  had  before  421,  but  it  is  likely  that  their 
allies  were  induced  to  support  them  more  by  fear  than  by 
good  will. 

In  nearly  all  lands  except  ancient  Greece  the  businesses 

of  governing  dependencies  which  may  be  disobedient,  and  of 

keeping  voluntary  allies  contented  to  perform 

statesman-      their  promises,  have  been  the  departments  of 

ship  rarely      government  in  which,  above  all  others,  wisdom 

needed  in  ©  ' 

Greek  states  and  civilian  statesmanship  have  been  needed 
and  have  been  learned.  In  Greece  after  477  the 
business  of  governing  dependencies  was  not  done  by  any 
city,  and  the  work  of  managing  voluntary  allies  was  under- 
taken by  no  city  but  Sparta,  and  by  Sparta  only  for  about 
thirty  years.  Consequently  wisdom  and  civilian  statesman- 
ship were  not  needed  and  were  not  learned,  except  perhaps 
in  Sparta  for  one  generation.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that 
the  work  of  governing  dependencies  which  might  disobey 
orders  had  been  needed  in  Attica  till  the  time  when 
Kleisthenes  made  his  constitution,  and  possibly  till  the 
battle  of  Marathon.  For  in  very  early  times  Athens,  no 
doubt,  had  trouble  in  ruling  the  towns  in  Attica ;  after  the 
time  of  Solon  the  men  of  the  Highlands  and  of  the  Sea  Cliff' 
would  not  readily  obey  the  men  of  the  city  and  the  Plain, 
and  up  to  the  time  of  Kleisthenes  provision  had  to  be  made 
against  local  dissensions.  Hence  in  the  constitutions  both 
of  Solon  and  of  Kleisthenes  arrangements  were  made  to 
ensure  that  men  having  skill  in  civilian  government  should 
have  a  large  share  of  influence.  The  archons  were  elected 
for  their  merits,  and  after  they  had  served  for  a  year  they 
became  members  of  the  Areopagus  for  life.  The  invasion 
of  Datis  which  ended  at  Marathon  no  doubt  completely 
united  all  the  inhabitants  of  Attica.     Henceforth  there  were 


chap,  xii.]  FROM  THE  GREEK  TOWNS  153 

no  recalcitrant  dependencies  in  Attica:  and  when  the 
Athenians  acquired  dependencies  beyond  the  sea  they  did 
not  govern  them.  Thus  it  came  about  that  after  the  battle 
of  Marathon  the  Athenians  did  not  need  civilian  statesman- 
ship for  any  purpose  whatever,  and  they  were  free  to  enact 
that  archons  should  be  taken  by  lot,  thus  making  it  certain 
that  the  Areopagus  would  never  again  be  filled  with  men 
distinguished  for  wisdom,  and  to  decide  that  in  the  council 
of  five  hundred,  which  after  the  degradation  of  the 
Areopagus  took  over  the  civilian  business  of  the  city, 
no  man  should  serve  long  enough  to  become  capable  of 
doing  his  work  with  the  efficiency  that  comes  of  experience. 
Between  462  and  431  it  is  likely  that  among  the  Spartiatse 
civilian  statesmanship  was  needed,  and  was  found  in  the 
annual  boards  of  ephors :  after  431  it  was  superfluous. 

In  404  Sparta  took  over  the  part  of  general  bully  which 
had  till  413  been  played  by  Athens.  Hence  about  394  a 
new  voluntary  alliance  was  formed  by  Bceotia,    ., 

*  *  Absence  of 

Athens,  Corinth,  and  Argos :  but  as  soon  as  the  friendliness 
Spartans  in  379  were  driven  out  of  the  citadel   Q™°eIk'town 
at  Thebes,  the  new  alliance  began  to  break  up,   communities 
and  its  members  showed   their  dislike   of  one 
another.     After  the  battle  of  Leuktra  in  371  it  is  hard  to 
find  any  two  Greek  town  communities  that  did  not  regard 
one  another  as  potential  enemies  and  even  as   probable 
enemies. 

Within  the  individual  Greek  cities  there  was  deterioration 
no  less  than  in  their  relations  towards  one  another.  At 
Athens   the    poor    citizens  who  controlled   the    „   .,  , 

r  Peril  of 

work   of  government  refused   to  serve  in   the  the  Greek 
army,  and  Plato,  the  most  brilliant  genius  then  JjUJ^  from 
living,  was  so  little  aware  that  skill  in  govern-   their  dis- 
ment  can  only  be  learned  by  practice,  that  in  his 
Republic  he  advocated  the  bestowal  of  supreme  political 


154  GENERAL  VIEW  [chap.  xti. 

authority  on  the  philosophers.  At  Sparta  the  Spartiatse 
were  few,  and  having  little  patriotic  ardour  themselves  could 
stir  none  in  the  minds  of  the  Inferiors,  the  Periceki,  and  the 
Neodamodeis.  But  the  deterioration  in  particular  towns 
was  of  small  moment  in  comparison  with  the  relations 
between  the  towns.  The  several  towns  were  no  longer 
without  experience  of  political  dealings  with  one  another, 
as  they  had  been  in  the  time  of  Xerxes.  When  Xerxes 
invaded  Greece  they  did  not  know  one  another,  and  regarded 
one  another  with  indifference,  or  at  worst  with  vague 
suspicion.  Now  after  371  each  of  them  knew  the  rest  and 
hated  them.  Meanwhile  to  the  north  of  the  Greeks  had 
grown  up  very  slowly  and  therefore  strongly  the  healthy 
and  powerful  tribal  kingdom  of  Macedonia;  and  none  of 
the  Greek  townsmen  except  a  part  of  the  Athenians  who 
listened  to  the  warnings  of  Demosthenes  looked  outside 
their  own  walls  with  enough  attention  to  discern  that  the 
Macedonians  were  dangerous  neighbours. 

The  general  conclusions  derived  from  a  survey  of  the 
whole  history  of  the  Greek  towns  are  these.  The  towns 
General  could  not  combine  in  alliances,  nor,  except  in  the 
conclusions.  case  0f  the  Boeotian  towns,  in  a  federation,  nor 
could  they  be  united  by  conquest.  Isolated  they  were  at 
the  beginning,  and  isolated  they  remained  to  the  end.  And 
their  isolation  was  caused  in  the  first  instance  by  the 
natural  barriers  which  divided  them  and  prevented  them 
from  fighting  against  one  another:  it  was  subsequently 
intensified  by  the  opinion  current  in  every  town  that  the 
town  was  self  sufficing  and  could  secure  its  own  interests 
without  the  support  of  alliances. 

This  chapter  may  properly  be  ended  with  a  tabular  view 
of  Greek  urban  bodies  politic  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  the  history  of  the  Greek  independent  cities.  A  general 
view  of  them  extending  only  to  480  B.C.,  given  in  the  eighth 


chap,  xit.]  OF  THE  GREEK  TOWNS  155 

chapter,  was  very  simple  and  straightforward,  because  till 
480  B.C.  every  Greek  urban  body  politic  only  bred  in  every 
generation  a  body  politic  like  itself  in  structure 

n       ,  -,-,  ,,  .nn  ,.  General  view 

and  character.  But  after  480  B.C.  it  often  Qf  Greek 
happened  that  a  Greek  body  politic  generated  urba?  bodies 
one  slightly  unlike  itself,  and  that  in  turn 
generated  one  more  unlike  the  first.  Thus  at  Athens  the 
composite  body  politic  of  510  bred  by  490  a  simple  body 
politic,  and  that  simple  body  politic  by  454  gave  birth  to  a 
simple  body  politic  corrupted  by  receipt  of  tribute,  and 
that  in  429  to  a  simple  body  politic,  still  more  corrupted  by 
receipt  of  tribute,  and  all  living  crowded  within  the  walls  of 
the  city.  In  Sparta,  by  398  B.C.,  there  had  been  generated  a 
community  in  which  the  Helots  had  become  personally  free, 
and  inequalities  had  arisen  among  the  Spartiatse :  and  that 
Spartan  community  of  398  B.C.  bred  others  like  itself  in  the 
succeeding  generations.  In  Argolis,  where  bodies  politic 
had  till  468  B.C.  been  composite,  there  followed  from  that 
date,  at  which  Mykenoe  and  Tiryns  were  depopulated,  a 
succession  of  simple  urban  communities;  in  these  Argive 
communities  the  poor  were  usually  the  rulers,  but  once  at 
least  in  371-370  the  rich  tried  to  get  control  of  the  govern- 
ment, and  in  consequence  a  thousand  of  them  were  beaten 
to  death  with  bludgeons.  In  the  many  maritime  com- 
mercial cities,  without  appreciable  rural  territory,  and  in  the 
Boeotian  confederacy,  no  new  forms  of  bodies  politic  arose. 
The  greater  part  of  the  maritime  cities  lost  their  independ- 
ence between  477  and  454,  and  thenceforth  did  not  contain 
bodies  politic  that  could  act  freely:  those  maritime  cities, 
as  Kerkyra  and  Corinth,  which  retained  something  nearly 
approaching  to  independence,  as  well  as  the  Boeotian  con- 
federacy, only  produced  such  bodies  politic  as  had  lived  in 
them  in  earlier  days.  Hence  in  my  completed  tabular  view 
of  Greek  urban   bodies  politic,  there  is  in  regard  to   the 


156  TABULAR  [chap.  xii. 

maritime  cities  and  to  Bceotia  nothing  new  to  add :  the  new 
forms  of  bodies  politic  that  arose  in  Sparta  and  Argolis  and 
Attica  must  be  duly  recorded.  The  pedigrees  of  bodies 
politic  in  Argolis  and  in  Attica  run  parallel  except  in  the 
later  generations,  which  in  Attica  were  corrupted  by  the 
habits  bred  from  receipt  of  tribute,  and  in  Argolis  were  not ; 
therefore  the  pedigrees  for  Argolis  and  for  Attica  will  be 
put  together  in  a  group.  The  pedigree  of  bodies  politic  in 
Sparta  had  none  other  like  it,  and  must  stand  alone.  Thus 
the  groups  of  pedigrees  in  the  table  now  inserted  are  not 
the  same  as  in  the  table  appended  to  the  eighth  chapter. 
The  groups  have  needed  to  be  made  afresh,  because  our 
survey  of  Greek  bodies  politic  is  now  more  complete  than 
when  the  earlier  table  was  constructed. 

It  is  manifest  from  the  course  not  only  of  Greek  history 
but  of  all  history  that  the  parentage  of  a  body  politic 
exercises  an  influence  always  large  and  often  paramount  in 
determining  its  character.  Hence  it  is,  that  in  the  table 
now  subjoined,  and  in  other  tables  to  follow  in  subsequent 
chapters,  bodies  politic  are  arranged  in  pedigrees.  Where 
it  chances  that  a  number  of  consecutive  generations  are 
undistinguishable  from  one  another,  they  are  mentioned  as 
a  succession,  and  some  words  to  describe  their  general 
character  are  inserted.  But  when  a  succession  of  genera- 
tions of  one  character  is  followed  immediately  by  a 
generation  or  several  generations  of  a  different  character, 
the  earlier  generations  are  noted  separately,  and  the  later 
separately:  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  a  vertical 
straight  line  is  inserted,  as  is  done  in  genealogical  tables, 
to  show  that  the  later  were  the  direct  progeny  of  the 
earlier.  When,  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  a  few  generations 
are  left  unnoticed,  those  that  are  before  the  gap  and  those 
that  come  after  it  are  shown  to  be  of  the  same  family  by 
the  insertion  of  a  sinuous  line. 


CHAP.    XII.] 


VIEW 


157 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  ALL  GREEK  URBAN  BODIES 
POLITIC,  ARRANGED  IN  PEDIGREES,  AND  THEIR 
GOVERNMENTS. 


Governments. 


Class  governments : 
Rule  of  the  rich  (Oligarchia),  or 
Rule  of  a  usurper  (Tyrannis),  or 
Rule  of  the  poor  (Demokratia). 


Bodies  Politic. 

Group  1. — In  about  sixty  mari- 
time cities,  with  strong 
frontiers  towards  the  land, 
and  not  having  appreciable 
territory  outside  their  walls. 

In  each  city  a  succession  of 
simple  urban  communities, 
maritime  and  commercial,  not 
waging  wars  by  land  as  prin- 
cipals. 

Best  examples  Corinth,  Megara, 
Naxos,  and  after  435  B.C., 
Kerkyra. 


Group  2. — In  Bceotia,  which  con- 
tained several  towns  in  federa- 
tion. 

A  succession  of  federal  bodies     Federal  government, 
politic. 

Group  3. — In  two  countries,  ruled 
each  by  a  single  city,  but  con- 
tainingother  towns,  which  were 
at  first  important  but  after- 
wards sank  to  insignificance. 

(1)  In  Argolis,  which  had  a 
chief  town,  and  till  468  B.C. 
also  other  towns. 


158 


TABULAR 


[chap.  XII. 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  ALL  GREEK  URBAN  BODIES  POLITIC,  ARRANGED 
IN  PEDIGREES,   AND  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

(a)  Before  468  B.C. 
A  succession  of  composite  urban     A  king  with  little  power,  and 

bodies    politic,    fighting    fre-         a  strong  council. 

quently  on  the  land. 


Rule  of  the  poor,  in  370  mur- 
derously violent. 


(b)  After  468  B.C. 

A  succession  of    simple    urban 

communities,    never    fighting 

as  principals  on  the  land. 
(2)  In  Attica,  which  had  a  chief 

city  and  also  other  towns. 

(a)  Till  490  B.C. 

A  succession  of  composite  bodies  At  one  time  mild  oligarchia,  at 
politic,  very  seldom  fighting  another  mild  tyrannis,  at 
by  land  and  having  no  alii-  others  mixed  government 
ances.  consisting  of 

(1)  Yearly  magistrates. 

(2)  A  senate  (Areopagus)  steadily 
growing  weaker. 

(3)  Assembly. 

(4)  Popular  law  courts. 

(b)  From  454  B.C.  to  431  B.C. 

A    simple    community,    partly  Mixed  government : 

urban,  partly  rural,  in  receipt  Active  organ,  one  man  (Perikles). 

of  tribute,  and  trying  to  avoid  Passive  organ,  the  poor  voters 

a  war  with  all  the  Greeks.  in  the  assembly. 


CHAP.    XII.] 


VIEW 


159 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  ALL  GREEK  URBAN   BODIES  POLITIC,  ARRANGED 
IN   PEDIGREES,    AND  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS.  —  Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

(c)  From  429  B.C.  to  413  B.C. 

A  simple  urban  community,  in 
receipt  of  tribute,  fighting 
desperately  to  keep  the  tribute. 


(d)  From  413  B.C.  to  405  B.C. 

A  simple  urban  community  with 
diminished  tribute,  fighting 
desperately  to  keep  what  it 
had. 


(e)  From  405  B.C.  to  338  B.C. 

Simple  urban  communities,  de- 
scended from  receivers  of 
tribute,  and  degenerating. 

Group  4.  Isolated  pedigree  of 
bodies  politic  in  Sparta. 

(a)  Before  431  B.C. 

A  succession  of  garrisons  of 
slave-masters. 


Governments. 

Class  government : 
Imprudent  rule  of  the  poor. 


Class  government : 

Usually,  rule  of  the  poor,  more 
imprudent  than  before. 

In  411  B.C.,  rule  of  a  gang  of 
ruffians,  led  by  an  ex-dem- 
agogue. 

Class  government : 
Selfish  and  unpatriotic  rule  of 
the  poor. 


Government  insignificant, 
toms  rigid. 


Cus- 


(b)  From  405  B.C.  to  338  B.C. 
Communities   either   in    receipt 

of  tribute  or  descended  from 

receivers  of  tribute. 


Very  selfish  rule  of  the  rich. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

ITALIAN   PEOPLES  TO   264   B.C. 

Italy,  though  its  surface  is  very  uneven,  is  not,  like  Greece, 
cut  up  by  mountains  into  rockbound  natural  divisions. 
Geography  Geographically  speaking  it  has,  in  what  is  known 
of  Italy.  as  the  Apennine  mountains,  a  backbone,  extend- 

ing for  the  whole  length  of  the  peninsula,  a  distance  of  seven 
hundred  miles,  from  Genoa  to  the  straits  of  Messina.  But 
it  is  only  in  a  geographical  sense,  or  because  they  divide  the 
waters  that  flow  into  the  Adriatic  from  those  that  run  into 
the  Tyrrhenian  sea,  that  the  Apennines  can  be  regarded  as 
a  backbone  or  a  range  of  mountains.  Nowhere  except  in  a 
stretch  of  fifty  miles  near  the  marble  quarries  of  Carrara  are 
they  steep  or  difficult  of  transit :  elsewhere  they  are  for  the 
most  part  only  hills  with  a  broad  back  and  nearly  flat 
on  the  top.  Many  passages  over  them  are  not  more  than 
two  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  and  are  approached  on 
both  sides  by  easy  slopes  through  valleys  which  abound  in 
pasture,  and  offer  almost  up  to  the  main  watershed  comfort- 
able sites  for  villages  of  herdsmen.  Hence  it  was  easy  in 
ancient  times  for  pastoral  peoples  to  advance  gradually 
across  the  smooth  tops  of  the  passes.  In  prehistoric  ages 
the  tribes  near  the  highest  ground  took  advantage  of  their 
opportunities,  and  before  400  B.C.,  which  is  the  earliest  date 
for  which  we  have  a  knowledge  of  the  distribution  of  the 
soil  among  the  races  which  inhabited  the  peninsula,  the 
Umbrians,  the  Sabines,  and  the  Samnites  had  all  seated 

160 


chap,  xiil]  ITALY  161 

themselves  astride  of  the  main  backbone  of  the  peninsula : 
and,  more  than  that,  instances  in  which  a  political  boundary 
coincided  with  the  main  watershed  were  either  very  rare  or 
entirely  absent.  From  all  this  we  can  conclude  that  the 
Apennines  were  too  easily  crossed  to  serve  as  natural 
frontiers  for  territories.  Moreover,  as  the  Apennines  are  not 
in  most  places  a  spiny  backbone  but  rather  a  broad  saddle 
back,  so  they  do  not  send  out  strongly  marked  ribs,  except 
from  the  lands  of  the  Umbrians  and  the  Sabines  to  the  east- 
ward. From  the  Sabine  Apennines  runs  out  towards  the 
Adriatic  a  ridge,  now  known  as  il  Gran  Sasso  d'ltalia,  whose 
highest  points  rise  to  ten  thousand  feet,  far  loftier  than  any 
point  on  the  main  watershed :  and  from  the  Umbrian 
Apennines  also  some  lateral  ranges  of  high  hills  go  out 
to  the  east.  Elsewhere  in  Italy  the  ground  slopes  easily 
from  the  round  back  of  the  Apennines  to  the  sea.  On  the 
eastern  side,  from  a  point  about  fifty  miles  further  down  the 
peninsula  than  il  Gran  Sasso  d'ltalia,  the  broad  plain  of 
Apulia  stretches  unbroken  to  the  heel  of  Italy :  on  the  west 
a  traveller  going  from  the  river  Arno,  on  which  Florence 
stands,  to  Cumse  or  Naples,  found  even  in  ancient  times  no 
natural  impediment  to  his  progress  except  the  Ciminian 
Forest  in  Etruria,  and  the  Volscian  mountains  between  the 
plain  of  Latium  and  the  mouth  of  the  river  Liris. 

The  coast  of  Italy  offers  no  natural  harbours  of  first  rate 
excellence  except  Tarentum,  under  the  heel  of  the  peninsula, 
and  Misenum  near  Cumse :  the  next  best  natural 

Italy  could 

ports  are  found  about  the  region  of  the  Arno  not  tempt  its 
and  the  Tiber.     Between  these  rivers  the  pro-  ?nJn^ei 

r_         inhabitants 

montories  of  Populonia  and  Argentario  provide  to  become 
fair  shelter  for  vessels:  and  the  channels  of  the  s  amen' 
rivers  themselves  also  make  tolerable  natural  havens,  but 
not  nearly  so  good  as  they  would  be  if  the  Mediterranean 
were  a  tidal  sea  and  filled  them  with  deep  water  twice  every 

h 


162  EAKLY  INHABITANTS  [chai\  xiii. 

day.  None  of  the  natural  harbours  of  Italy  has  the 
advantage,  which  in  primitive  ages  is  very  important, 
of  looking  out  on  an  archipelago  of  islands :  and  hence 
the  most  ancient  inhabitants  of  the  country  had  not 
that  inducement  to  take  to  the  sea  in  order  to  explore 
what  could  not  be  reached  by  land,  which  led  the  earliest 
Greeks  to  become  seamen  in  order  to  settle  on  the  islands  of 
the  JEgean  Sea.  The  Phoenician  mariners  of  Tyre  and  Sidon, 
who  during  the  Mykenean  age  easily  found  their  way  to 
Greece,  had  no  islands  to  serve  as  finger  posts  guiding  them 
to  Italy.  In  sailing  to  the  extreme  west  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea,  they  no  doubt  crept  cautiously  along  the  coast 
of  Africa ;  and  there  are  no  indications  tending  to  show  that 
they  visited  Italy,  which  lay  far  from  their  route,  or  that 
the  inhabitants  of  Italy  in  early  prehistoric  ages  had  any 
foreign  instructors  to  teach  them  the  art  of  the  mariner. 

It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  at  any  rate  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  the  peoples  who  were  living  in  Italy  at  the 
beginning  of  the  ages  known  to  us  from  records 

Early 

inhabitants  came  into  the  peninsula  from  the  north.  Hence 
of  southern  the  primeval  occupants  of  the  soil  must  be 
sought  in  the  south,  to  which  they  were  pushed 
by  new  comers  from  over  the  Alps.  Among  the  names  of 
peoples  who  lived  in  the  south  of  the  peninsula  in  ages 
which  were  half  historical  and  half  prehistoric,  those  which 
are  mentioned  most  frequently  by  Greek  or  Roman  authors 
are  Itali,  Messapii,  Iapyges,  and  Sallentini.  The  languages 
of  the  Itali  and  the  Sallentini  are  totally  unknown  to  us, 
and  we  cannot  tell  whether  they  belonged  to  the  Aryan 
family  of  languages.  Of  the  dialect  of  the  Messapii  (who 
can  scarcely  be  distinguished  from  the  Iapyges)  some 
fragments  have  been  preserved  in  which  Mommsen  detected 
analogies  with  the  Greek  and  Latin  inflexions  of  the 
genitive  case,  and  these  analogies   may  probably  indicate 


chap,  xiii.]  OF  ITALY  163 

that  the  dialect  was  one  of  the  Aryan  varieties  of  speech.1 
Next  after  these  primaeval  peoples  there  came  from  over  the 
Alps  a  second  group  of  tribes,  who  may  be  classified  under 
the  names  Oscans,  Sabellians,  Latins,  and  Umbrians.  They 
came  probably  in  many  successive  swarms :  from  the  relative 
positions  which  they  occupied  in  the  peninsula  we  may 
conjecture  that  the  Oscan  peoples  came  first,  and  the 
Umbrians  last.  The  Oscans  settled  in  the  valley  of  the 
Volturnus,  the  Latins  and  Sabellians  further  north,  and  the 
Umbrians  furthest  north  in  that  region  on  the  top  of  the 
Apennines  about  Iguvium  (Gubbio)  which  still  bears  their 
name,  in  the  valleys  which  from  thence  run  down  eastward 
into  the  Adriatic  Sea,  and  in  the  lands  to  the  west  which  are 
drained  by  the  river  Umbro  (Ombrone)  to  the  south  of  the 
Arno.  The  Oscans,  the  Latins,  the  Sabellians,  and  the 
Umbrians,  as  we  see  from  literature  and  from  inscriptions, 
all  spoke  closely  allied  Aryan  languages. 

The  third  group  of  peoples  in  Italy  were  the  Tyrrhenians 
or  Etruscans.  They  came  to  the  peninsula  evidently  after 
the  Umbrians :  they  overpowered  the  Umbrians   _ 

*  r  Etruscans, 

in  the  valley  of  the  Umbro,  and  made  themselves  Celts, 
masters  not  only  of  all  the  space  between  the  Greeks- 
Arno  and  the  Tiber,  which  was  named  after  them  Etruria, 
but  also  of  a  wide  district  to  the  north  of  the  Apennines, 
around  the  city  which  they  called  Felsina,  and  we  call 
Bologna.  Some  inscriptions  in  their  language  have  been 
found  in  Etruria,  and  a  longer  writing  in  the  same  language 
in  Lemnos,  or  one  of  the  neighbouring  islands  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  iEgean  Sea :  but  all  attempts  to  decipher  these 
remnants  of  the  Etruscan  tongue  have  hitherto  failed,  and 
all  that  we  know  for  certain  about  the  place  of  the  Etruscans 
among  the  peoples  of  the  world  is  that  their  language  was 
not  Aryan.     The  last  comers  who  entered  the  peninsula 

1  Mominsen,  Unteritalische  Dialecte. 


164  EARLY  INHABITANTS  [chap.  xtti. 

from  the  north  were  Celts  from  Gaul.  They  occupied 
the  greater  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Po,  expelled  the 
Etruscans  from  all  their  settlements  on  the  north  of  the 
Apennines,  and  drove  the  Umbrians  from  the  coast  of  the 
Adriatic  Sea  that  lay  north  eastward  of  Iguvium,  which  was 
the  central  point  of  the  Umbrian  settlements.  On  the 
southern  coasts  the  Greeks  began,  perhaps  about  800  B.C., 
to  establish  colonies:  the  first  Greek  settlers  came  from 
Kyme  in  Asia  Minor,  and  their  Italian  colony  was  named 
Cumse.  Before  550  B.C.  all  the  coast  from  Cumse  to 
Tarentum  was  bordered  with  a  fringe  of  flourishing  Greek 
commercial  cities. 

Among  all  the  ancient  peoples  of  Italy  those  known  to  us 
at  the  earliest  stage  of  their  career  are  the  Latins.  We  get 
our  knowledge  of  them  from  traditions:  but 
only  those  traditions  are  trustworthy  which  are 
confirmed  by  the  known  geography  and  ethnography  of 
Latium  and  the  parts  around  it.  The  ground  occupied  by 
the  Latins  lay  on  the  south  east  side  of  the  river  Tiber. 
From  the  coast  it  extended  inland  a  distance  of  thirty  five 
miles  to  the  hills  which  come  down  from  the  central 
Apennines  on  the  two  sides  of  the  river  Anio.  Its 
greatest  width,  measured  from  the  river  Tiber  to  Prameste 
and  Lanuvium,  the  most  distant  Latin  strongholds  from 
the  river,  was  twenty  miles ;  we  must,  however,  imagine 
that  Praeneste  and  Lanuvium  owned  some  ground  beyond 
their  actual  fortresses  on  the  side  remote  from  the  Tiber, 
and  we  may  take  twenty  five  miles  as  the  extreme  breadth 
of  the  ground  occupied  by  the  Latins.  On  the  other  hand, 
near  the  coast  were  no  Latin  strongholds  except  Lauren  turn 
and  Lavinium,  and  in  that  part  the  Latin  settlements  only 
extended  fifteen  miles  from  the  Tiber.  Thus  the  ground 
occupied  by  the  Latins  at  the  earliest  time  to  which  we  can 
go  back  measured  thirty  five  miles  from  the  coast  inland, 


chap,  xiil]  OF  ITALY  165 

and  at  a  liberal  estimate  had  an  average  width  of  twenty 
five  miles  from  the  Tiber  towards  the  south  east.  Thus  the 
whole  area  occupied  by  the  Latins  was  something  less  than 
nine  hundred  square  miles. 

The  inhabitants  of  Latium,  who  with  their  neighbours  the 
Sabines  and  Rutulians  were  the  parents  of  the  Roman 
commonwealth,  showed  themselves  in  the  ages 

j.  xic  i— 3.tins 

known  to  history  to  be  the  best  and  the  strongest  an  agncui- 
of  the  Italians.  Judging  merely  from  their  later  before  they6 
pre-eminence  we  should  be  inclined  to  conjecture  lived  in 

fortresses 

that  when  first  they  came  into  Italy  they  were 
among  the  more  progressive  of  the  Aryan-speaking  im- 
migrants into  the  peninsula,  and  therefore  were  accustomed 
to  practise  that  system  of  agriculture  which  the  Italians  and 
the  Greeks  had  originated  in  common  before  they  moved 
into  Italy  and  the  Balkan  peninsula.  It  is,  however,  for 
other  reasons  quite  certain  that  the  Latins  in  an  extremely 
remote  age  were  not  mere  herdsmen  but  were  accustomed 
to  till  the  soil  and  store  its  produce.  For  the  Latins  lived 
permanently  in  their  strongholds  upon  and  around  the 
Alban  hills  long  before  Rome  was  founded.  But  mere 
herdsmen  cannot  live  permanently  in  a  stronghold.  They 
must  be  habitually  in  the  open  country  to  get  grazing  for 
their  cattle  and  sheep.  The  only  strongholds  that  they  can 
make  use  of  are  camps  of  refuge  with  some  pasture  within 
them,  like  the  Maiden  Castle  near  Dorchester,  or  Wandle- 
bury  near  Cambridge,  or  Ledbury  Camp  in  Herefordshire : 
these  strongholds  of  pastoral  peoples  show  clearly  that  they 
were  only  to  be  occupied  for  a  few  days  at  the  most,  because 
they  are  on  hill  tops  and  have  no  supply  of  spring  water 
that  could  long  suffice  to  quench  the  thirst  of  the  beasts. 
The  Latins  lived  throughout  the  year  in  their  fortresses : 
and  for  generations  before  they  could  think  of  such  a  life 
they  must  have  been  accustomed  to  store  the  produce  of 


166  LATINS  [chap.  Xui. 

the  land  to  provide  them  with  sustenance  during  a 
siege. 

The  lands  on  which  the  Latins  lived  included  hills  on 
either  side  of  the  river  Anio  and  the  whole  isolated  volcanic 
The  Latin  mass  of  the  Alban  mountains.  On  these  hills 
fortresses.       an(j  ajso  on  faG  }ower  ground  between  them  are 

many  sites  admirably  suited  for  making  strong  fortresses. 
The  Latins  took  advantage  of  their  opportunities  and  built 
a  large  number  of  towns.  Learned  Roman  writers  who 
lived  in  or  after  the  Augustan  age  record  the  names  of 
about  fifty  Latin  towns,  but  confess  that  for  most  of  them 
they  know  nothing  but  the  names.  Ten  Latin  fortresses, 
whose  positions  have  been  identified  beyond  dispute,  were 
built  on  sites  of  remarkable  strength  for  defence :  one  more, 
Corbio,  is  known  from  the  stories  about  it  to  have  stood 
near  the  top  of  the  outer  crater  of  the  Alban  mountains  and 
was  therefore  very  difficult  of  access.  The  loftier  parts  of 
the  old  Alban  volcano  were  occupied  by  Alba,  Tusculum, 
and  Corbio:  lower  summits  on  the  spurs  or  slopes  of  the 
mountain  gave  space  for  Aricia,  Labici,  and  Lanuvium :  the 
lower  ground  near  the  coast  furnished  a  strong  natural  site 
for  Lavinium ;  and  on  the  hills  on  the  two  sides  of  the 
Anio  were  built  Nomentum,  Tibur,  Pedum,  and  Prseneste.1 
Every  one  of  these  eleven  greater  towns  of  Latium  was 
originally,  and  probably  remained  for  ages,  independent, 
since  each  of  them  was  too  strong  to  be  conquered  by  its 
neighbours.  But  each  of  them  must  have  possessed  for 
sustenance  land  fit  for  tillage  and  pasture  in  the  lower 
ground  of  the  Campagna:  the  possessions  of  the  several 
towns  were  not  marked  off  from  one  another  by  any  natural 
frontiers ;  hence  no  doubt  the  towns  contended  in  arms  for 

1  For  the  list  and  sites  of  the  original  strongholds  of  the  Latins,  see 
Mommsen,  Hist.,  vol.  1,  357,  358  :  the  articles  on  the  individual  towns,  by 
Sir  E.  Banbury,  in  Smith,  Diet.  Oeogr.  :  and  the  map  of  the  environs  of 
Rome,  in  Smith,  Atlas,  plate  19. 


chap,  xiii.]  ROME  167 

the   settlement   of    their   boundaries,  and   the   Latins  got 
constant  practice  and  skill  in  the  art  of  war. 

The  Latins  were  surrounded  by  peoples  of  different  stocks 
from  their  own.  To  the  north  were  Sabellians,  who  here 
were  called  Sabines ;  to  the  east  and  south  and  Neighbours 
west  iEquians,  Volscians,  and  Rutulians:  the  oftheLatms- 
further  side  of  the  Tiber  was  occupied  by  some  people  alien 
to  the  Latins :  we  do  not  know  for  certain  who  lived  there 
in  the  very  early  days  of  the  Latins,  but  it  is  not  improbable 
that  the  inhabitants  may  have  been  Umbrians.  Although 
the  Latin  towns  had  fought  with  one  another  before  they 
settled  their  boundaries,  they  were  better  friends  with  one 
another  than  with  any  aliens,  and  accordingly  they  formed 
an  alliance  or  possibly  a  confederation  for  defence.  When 
the  Etruscans  came  down  from  the  north  and  occupied  the 
strong  fortress  of  Veil,  a  few  miles  north  of  the  Tiber,  the 
new  Etruscan  stronghold  was  formidable  not  only  to  the 
Latins,  but  also  to  the  Sabines  and  the  Rutulians.  Hence 
it  came  about  that  Latins,  Sabines,  and  Rutulians  were  glad 
to  have  as  a  bulwark  against  the  Etruscans  a  strong  town 
held  by  kinsmen  of  their  own  on  the  river  Tiber. 

The  site  of  the  town  which  acted  as  a  bulwark  for  the 
Latins,  the  Sabines,  and  the  Rutulians  was  a  group  of  seven 
low  hills  adjoining  the  river  Tiber  at  a  point  where  . 

an  island  in  the  stream  afforded  an  easy  passage  nings  of 
to  the  other  side :  on  these  hills  Rome  was  built  Rome- 
and  grew  into  a  strong  fortress.  It  is  probable  that  the 
original  garrison  of  the  fortress  was  not  all  drawn  from  one 
people,  for  the  numbers  that  occur  in  the  earliest  Roman 
institutions,  military,  political,  and  religious,  are  multiples 
of  three.  There  were  three  centuries  of  cavalry,  three 
thousands  of  infantry,  thirty  curias,  six  Vestal  Virgins, 
twelve  Salii,  afterwards  increased  to  twenty  four,  twelve 
Fratres  Arvales,  twenty  four  chapels   of  the  Argei.     The 


168  EARLY  SETTLERS  [chap.  xiii. 

systematic  triplication  of  military  and  political  units  and 
of  priesthoods  could  not  be  understood  if  we  supposed  that 
the  original  inhabitants  of  Rome  were  all  of  one  origin  and 
kindred:  but  it  is  explained  by  passages  in  Roman  and 
Greek  authors  which  tell  us  that  the  three  centuries  of 
cavalry  were  called  Titienses,  Ramnes,  and  Luceres,  and  that 
the  Titienses  were  Sabini,  and  the  Luceres  received  their  name 
from  Ardea,  the  chief  city  of  the  Rutuli,  with  the  additional 
statement  that  the  Luceres  were  a  third  part  of  the  Roman 
people.1  All  the  problems  that  arise  from  the  prevalence 
of  multiples  of  three  in  early  Roman  institutions  are  solved 
if  we  suppose  that  the  original  garrison  of  Rome  consisted 
of  three  contingents,  Titienses  drawn  from  the  Sabellian 
people  of  the  Sabine  hills,  Ramnes  from  the  Latins,  and 
Luceres  from  the  Rutuli  of  Ardea,  and  that  these  three 
contingents,  on  forming  by  their  voluntary  consent  a  single 
community  for  the  defence  of  their  new  abode,  divided 
public  offices  and  public  duties  among  themselves  in  equal 
shares. 

The  earliest  stronghold  at  Rome  was  Roma  Quadrata,  or 
the  Mons  Palatinus.  Around  the  Palatine  Mount  the 
Fresh  community   formed   of  the   Titienses,   Ramnes, 

peoples  and  Luceres  spread  till  they  covered  the  Septem 

original  Montes :  and  over  this  area  the  members  of  the 

Romans.  three  component  tribes  must  have  mingled  in- 
discriminately, since  we  do  not  find  that  any  locality  was 
allotted  to  any  one  of  them.  A  little  to  the  north  of  the 
seven  Montes  two  eminences  called  Colles  (the  Quirinal 
and  the  Viminal)  were  occupied  by  a  community  distinct 
from  the  community  of  the  seven  Montes.  In  the  course  of 
time  the  men  of  the  Colles  were  taken  into  the  community 
formed  by  the  men  of  the  Montes,  and  when  they  were 

1  Titienses,  Ramnes,  Livy,  1.  13  :  Luceres,  Festus,  apud  Paul.  Diac.  ed. 
Miiller,  p.  119. 


chap,  xiii.]  IN  EOME  169 

enrolled  among  its  citizens  were  artificially  divided  into 
three  bodies  known  as  second  Titienses,  second  Rainnes, 
second  Luceres.  Hence  it  is  that  Festus  states  that  the 
body  of  Roman  citizens  consisted  of  six  parts,  the  first  and 
second  Titienses,  the  first  and  second  Ramnes,  and  the  first 
and  second  Luceres.1  The  men  comprised  in  these  six  parts 
were  the  Roman  body  of  burgesses  j  they  called  themselves 
Patres,  Fathers  of  Roman  Households,  or  Patricii,  the  sons 
of  the  Fathers.  But  these  burgesses  did  not  continue,  even 
to  the  end  of  the  age  that  is  entirely  prehistoric,  to  be 
the  only  inhabitants  of  Rome.  They  conquered  Csenina, 
Crustumeria,  Antemnae,  Politorium,  Tellense,  Ficana, 
Medullia,  Apiolse,  all  of  them  Latin  towns  within  ten  or 
fifteen  miles  of  Rome ;  after  taking  one  of  these  towns  they 
usually  razed  its  walls  to  prevent  it  from  being  reoccupied 
by  enemies,  and  either  transported  the  inhabitants  to  Rome 
or  left  them  as  peasants  on  their  own  old  territory,  free 
from  personal  servitude  but  in  strict  subjection  to  their 
Roman  rulers.2  Besides  this,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  men 
from  outside  the  Roman  territory  came  voluntarily  to  settle 
in  or  near  Rome,  in  search  of  profit,  employment,  or  pro- 
tection, just  as  in  the  early  Middle  Ages  men  gathered  under 
the  walls  of  a  castle  or  a  monastery.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
conquered  towns  and  the  voluntary  new  comers  were  all 
outside  the  body  of  burgesses,  and  were  known  collectively 
as  the  Plebs  or  Multitude. 

The  component  parts  of  the  government  of  Rome  in  its 
beginning  were  a  king,  a  senate  of  elders,  and  the  Patres 
arranged  for  the  purpose  of  voting  in  thirty  Curiae.  The 
earliest  kings  were  no  doubt  native  Romans :  the  garrison  of 
Rome  from  its  first  settlement  on  the  Palatine  must  have 

1  FeBtus,   ed.    Miiller,   p.    344.      On    the    Montes    and    the    Colles    see 
Mommsen,  Hist.,  1.  50-58. 
aLivy,  1.  9-11,  33,  35. 


170  KINGS  IN  ROME  [chap.  xiii. 

needed  a  military  commander,  and  the  military  commander 
was  sure  to  be  converted  into  a  king.     The  names,  however, 

of  the  native  kings  of  Rome  were  not  known  to 
government    the  makers  of  legends,  and  instead  of  real  native 

kings  they  give  us  imaginary  personifications 
of  virtues  under  the  names  of  Romulus,  Numa,  Hostilius, 
and  Martius.  The  kings  of  Rome  whose  names  were 
remembered  were  first  Tarquinius  Priscus,  then  Servius 
Tullius,  and  last  Tarquinius  Superbus.  Tarquinius  Priscus 
came  to  Rome  from  the  Etruscan  city  of  Tarquinii.  The 
Roman  narrators  of  legends  say  that,  though  he  came 
from  Tarquinii,  he  was  in  truth  a  Corinthian  who  had 
settled  there.  Tarquinius  Superbus,  however,  whom  they 
represent  as  son  of  Tarquinius  Priscus,  took  refuge  accord- 
ing to  their  story  at  Tarquinii  after  he  had  been  expelled 
from  Rome,  and  was  able  to  induce  the  Etruscan  cities  of 
Tarquinii,  Veii,  and  Clusium  to  give  him  aid  towards  his 
restoration  by  the  plea  that  he  was  himself  an  Etruscan.1 
The  forcible  intervention  of  these  cities  on  his  behalf  clearly 
indicates  that  they  regarded  him  as  their  kinsman,  and  that 
he  was  in  truth  an  Etruscan;  hence  it  follows  that  his 
father  or  grandfather,  Tarquinius  Priscus,  was  Etruscan 
also.  Servius  Tullius,  whose  reign  came  between  those  of 
Tarquinius  Priscus  and  Tarquinius  Superbus,  is  represented 
as  having  attained  the  kingly  dignity  because  he  had 
married  a  daughter  of  Tarquinius  Priscus :  his  name  is 
neither  Etruscan  nor  Roman,  but  betrays  his  Latin  or 
servile  origin.  Thus  none  of  the  kings  of  Rome  whose 
names  have  been  preserved  belonged  to  the  Patricii  or 
original  Roman  burgesses. 

The  land  of  the  Etruscans  whence  the  family  of  the 
Tarquins  came  to  Rome  bore  some  general  resemblance  to 
Latium,  but  lay  at  a  higher  general  altitude,  was  somewhat 

1  Livy,  2.  6  and  9. 


chap,  xiii.]  THE  ETRUSCANS  171 

less  fertile  and  very  much  larger.  The  Latins  occupied 
only  nine  hundred  square  miles:  the  Etruscans  had  in 
Etruria  alone,  that  is,  in  the  land  between  the 
Arno  and  the  Tiber,  fifteen  thousand.  Etruria, 
like  Latium,  presented  many  eminences  or  escarped  ridges 
suitable  for  fortification :  hence  the  Etruscans  built  them- 
selves strongholds,  and  each  of  their  fortresses  was  inde- 
pendent, because  it  was  too  strong  to  be  conquered.  But 
the  natural  sites  for  fortified  towns  were  not  so  near  together 
as  they  were  in  Latium:  hence  the  Etruscan  towns  had 
more  elbow-room  than  the  Latin  towns,  and  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  among  the  fourteen  or  fifteen  towns  in  Etruria 
there  were  some  that  owned  a  territory  as  large  as  the 
whole  of  Latium  and  Rome.  As  the  Etruscan  towns  were 
large  and  populous,  they  feared  no  aggression  from  outside 
of  Etruria,  and  had  no  occasion  to  act  together  as  allies  or 
to  form  a  confederation,  but  regarded  each  other  as  rivals 
rather  than  as  friends.  In  the  course  of  the  century  from 
600  B.C.  to  500  B.C.  the  great  power  attained  by  some  of  the 
Etruscan  towns  was  proved  by  the  accession  of  Tarquinius 
Priscus  as  king  of  Rome,  and  by  the  appearance,  about 
538  B.C.,  of  Etruscans  as  possessors  of  a  navy. 

How  it  came  about  that  some  of  the  Etruscan  towns 
could  equip  a  fleet  we  do  not  know  from  records,  but  may 
imagine  from  combining  some  well  known  facts. 
Almost  as  soon  as  the  Etruscans  made  their  power  of  the 
settlements  in  the  southern  part  of  Etruria  they  ruscans- 
must  have  known  the  art  of  building  boats.  They  would  be 
likely  to  discover  it  for  themselves:  but,  if  they  did  not, 
they  could  not  fail  to  learn  it  from  their  neighbours,  the 
Latins,  who,  as  we  have  already  noticed,  brought  a  knowledge 
of  it  into  Italy  when  they  migrated  from  the  common  abode 
of  the  Aryan  peoples.1     The  Greek   names  of  Pyrgi  and 

1  See  p.  5,  p.  11. 


172  THEORY  HELD  BY  [chap.  xiii. 

Telamon,  on  the  coast  of  Etruria,  and  of  iEthalia,  now  Elba, 
indicate  that  Greeks  must  have  visited  the  Etruscan  Sea  at 
a  time  when  some  positions  on  the  mainland,  and  the  most 
important  of  the  islands  near  it,  had  not  yet  any  names  in 
the  Etruscan  language  that  were  generally  current,  and 
therefore  before  the  Etruscans  became  a  seafaring  people. 
The  nearest  Greeks  to  Etruria  were  those  settled  at  Cumae 
and  further  south  on  the  western  shore  of  Italy,  and  hence  it 
is  likely  that  these  were  the  first  Greeks  who  frequented  the 
Etruscan  Sea.  As  soon  as  Greeks  came  to  Etruria,  the 
Etruscans  could  learn  from  them  the  art  of  building  and 
managing  ships.  From  about  600  B.C.  the  Carthaginians 
were  powerful  both  on  land  and  sea:  and  about  538  B.C. 
some  of  the  Etruscan  towns  sent  out  a  squadron  of  sixty 
ships  to  co-operate  with  a  Carthaginian  squadron  of  equal 
number  in  attacking  a  colony  of  Phokaeans  from  Asia  Minor, 
who  had  settled  at  Alalia  on  the  east  coast  of  Corsica  and 
annoyed  all  their  neighbours  by  piratical  expeditions.1 

The  Roman  antiquarians  of  the  age  of  Cicero  had  a 
definite  theory  about  the  constitution  of  Rome  under  the 
Theory  held  kings.  They  believed  that  they  knew  that  a 
by  Roman  king  had  almost  unrestrained  power  as  long  as 
about  the  •  ne  lived,  but  that  on  the  death  of  a  king  elaborate 
constitution  machinery  was  set  in  action  by  the  senate  for 
under  the  determining  with  the  aid  of  the  thirty  Curiae  of 
kings.  Patres  who  should  be  his  successor.    Their  theory 

must  have  been  constructed  by  inference  from  the  procedure 
that  was  usual  in  the  first  two  or  three  centuries  of  the 
Roman  Republic :  for  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  they  had 
any  trustworthy  records  of  what  was  done  in  the  age  of  the 
kings.  Their  theory  was  generally  accepted  by  the  Romans ; 
and  when  Livy  and  Dionysius,  about  forty  or  fifty  years 
after  the   time  of  Cicero,  presented   legends  about   Rome 

1  Herodotus,  1.  163-167. 


chap,  xiii.]  ROMAN  ANTIQUARIANS  173 

under  the  kings  in  a  literary  form,  they  assumed  the 
accepted  theory  to  be  correct,  and  it  serves  as  a  background 
for  their  narratives. 

But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  their  narratives  make  out 
that,  in  so  far  as  concerns  the  respective  powers  of  King, 
Senate,  and  Curias,  the  constitution  was  the  same 

A  WC3.K 

under  the  native  kings  Numa,  Hostilius,  and  point  in  their 
Ancus  Martius,  as  under  Tarquinius  Priscus  and  eory' 
Servius  Tullius.  It  was  easy  for  the  narrators  to  believe 
that  no  change  in  the  constitution  was  introduced  at  the 
accession  of  Tarquinius  Priscus,  because  the  Roman  tradition 
gave  out  that  Tarquinius  was  a  Corinthian  who  had  long 
been  domiciled  at  Rome,  and  that  the  Romans  chose  him  as 
their  king  of  their  own  free  will,  simply  because  he  was  the 
man  most  worthy  to  reign.  But  the  story  that  the  Romans 
chose  Tarquinius  to  be  king  simply  because  he  was  the 
worthiest  seems  grossly  improbable.  It  is  not  for  such 
reasons  that  peoples  choose  foreigners  to  reign  over  them, 
and  we  must  suppose  that  the  Romans  took  Tarquinius  as 
their  king  under  some  stress  of  circumstances.  It  might  be 
that  the  Romans  were  vanquished  by  a  prince  of  the  town 
of  Tarquinii,  and  accepted  him  as  a  conqueror  to  rule  over 
them:  or  it  might  be  that  they  were  in  danger  of  being 
overpowered  by  the  men  of  Veii  or  some  other  neighbouring 
people,  and  therefore  purchased  the  aid  of  Tarquinii  by 
accepting  a  Tarquinian  as  their  king.  But  whether  the 
king  from  Tarquinii  came  as  a  conqueror  or  as  a  champion, 
his  coming  would  be  likely  to  alter  the  constitution  from 
what  it  had  been.  Hence  it  is  likely  that  there  was  one 
constitution  of  Rome  under  some  native  kings  of  whom  we 
know  nothing  except  that  their  names  were  not  Romulus, 
Numa,  Hostilius,  and  Martius,  and  another  under  Tarquinius 
Priscus  and  Servius  Tullius :  and  it  may  perhaps  be  not 
worth  while  to  pay  much  attention  to  the  theory  of  the 


174  THE  SERVIAN  [chap,  xiii 

Roman  antiquarians  about  the  constitution  of  Rome  under 
the  kings,  which  must  have  been  derived  by  inference  from 
the  constitution  of  the  Roman  republic. 

The  earliest  change  in  the  Roman  institutions  of  which 

we  have  any  knowledge  is  the  reform  of  the  army  which 

was  attributed  to  Servius   Tullius.     Both  Livy 

reform  of  the   an(^  Dionysius  give  us  descriptions  of  this  reform 

Roman  an(j  0f  tne  army  which  resulted  from  it ;  but  it 

army. 

is  probable  that  they  derived  their  descriptions 
from  a  document  drawn  up  not  earlier  than  269  B.C.  (more 
than  two  and  a  half  centuries  after  the  Servian  reform  was 
carried  out),  which  described  the  organisation  of  the  Roman 
people  for  military  purposes  as  it  stood  when  the  document 
was  drawn  up,  and  not  as  it  stood  immediately  after  the 
Servian  reform.  Hence  in  reading  their  descriptions  of  the 
Servian  reform  we  may  reject  those  details  which  may 
probably  belong  to  a  later  age.  Some  parts,  however,  of 
their  descriptions  are  corroborated  by  historical  facts  which 
occurred  long  before  269  B.C.:  these  we  must  accept,  and 
they  are  amply  sufficient  to  show  the  importance  of  the 
Servian  reform.1 

From  the  position  of  Rome  and  its  surroundings  it  is 
clear  that  the  town  from  its  first  foundation,  or  from  the 
Servian  time  when  the  Etruscans   became  formidable, 

army.  must  have  had  a  strong  and  active  military  force. 

Long  before  the  Servian  reform  both  patricians  and 
plebeians  must  have  served  as  soldiers;  long  before  that 
reform  the  patricians  filled  six  centuries  or  squadrons  of 
cavalry,  and  perhaps  the  wealthier  plebeians  were  also 
horsemen :  the  mass  of  the  able  bodied  men  served  on  foot 


1  Livy,  1.  43  ;  Dionysius,  4.  16.  Professor  Botsford,  The  Roman  Assemblies, 
p.  67,  n.  4,  and  p.  87,  gives  reasons  for  believing  that  Livy  and  Dionysius 
copied  from  a  document  which  described  the  military  organisation  of  about 
269  B.C. 


chap,  xiii.]  AEMY  175 

in  phalanxes  of  infantry.  Thus  before  the  Servian  reform 
was  made  both  king  and  people  well  knew  by  experience 
what  was  needed  in  military  organisation.  The  Servian 
reform  consisted  in  the  making  of  new  rules  which  ensured 
that  every  patrician  and  every  plebeian  should  know  his 
place  in  the  army,  and  the  duties  incumbent  on  him  in 
regard  to  service  and  equipment. 

When  those  rules  had  been  made  and  enforced  the 
wealthiest  Eomans  still  continued  to  form  a  certain  number, 
probably  an  increased  number,  of  squadrons  of  cavalry :  the 
rest  of  the  able  bodied  men  still  served  in  phalanxes  of 
infantry,  and  they  also  were  divided  into  small  companies 
called  centuries.  In  a  Roman  phalanx  the  men  stood  seven 
ranks  deep.  It  was  essential  to  the  efficiency  of  a  phalanx 
that  the  best  armed  and  strongest  men  should  stand  in  the 
ranks  nearest  to  the  front :  and  therefore  the  Servian  rules 
prescribed  that  the  first  four  ranks  should  be  filled  with  the 
centuries  of  those  men  who  were  enabled  by  the  amount  of 
their  possessions  to  keep  themselves  well  fed  and  fully 
armed.  The  centuries  in  the  first  four  ranks  were  called 
sometimes  the  classis  or  summoning,  sometimes  the  first 
classis.  The  fifth  rank  was  filled  with  centuries  composed 
of  men  somewhat  poorer  than  those  in  the  first  four  ranks 
and  therefore  less  completely  equipped :  these  centuries 
were  the  second  classis.  The  sixth  and  seventh  ranks  were 
manned  from  the  third  and  fourth  classes,  who  were  poorer 
and  worse  armed  than  the  classes  in  front  of  them.  And 
so  the  phalanx  was  complete.  In  addition  to  the  four 
classes  in  the  phalanx  there  was  a  fifth  class  composed  of 
very  poor  men  who  served  outside  the  phalanx  as  slingers 
or  skirmishers. 

In  order  to  place  the  men  in  their  proper  classes  it  was 
necessary  to  estimate  their  property.  The  estimation,  in 
which    probably    account    was    originally    taken    only    of 


176  TARQUINIUS  [chap.  xiii. 

property  in  land,  was  called  census:  and  when  the  census 
had  been  taken  every  man  who  owned  any  land,  whether  he 
Servian  was  patrician  or  plebeian,  was  duly  placed  in  his 

census.  class  and  in  his  century  and  knew  the  nature  and 

extent  of  his  military  obligations.  The  general  effect  of  the 
Servian  reform  was  to  arrange  the  fighting  men  of  Rome  in 
classes  according  to  gradations  of  military  efficiency  and 
incidentally  in  gradations  according  to  wealth.  In  order  to 
facilitate  the  making  of  the  census  or  register  of  soldiers 
the  landowners  were  divided  into  tribes  according  to  the 
local  position  of  their  plots  of  ground :  but  it  is  not  certain 
whether  the  tribes  made  for  this  purpose  included  only 
owners  of  land  within  the  town  of  Rome  or  all  owners  in 
town  and  country  alike.  In  close  connection  with  the 
Servian  reform  of  the  army  occurred  the  building  of  the 
walls  of  Rome  which  enclosed  both  the  montes  and  the 
colles  in  an  encircling  fortification. 

The  territory  and  power  of  Tarquinius  Superbus  can  be 
roughly  estimated.  From  stories  told  of  the  next  age  after 
Tarquinius  Him  we  may  infer  that  the  north  western  bank 
Superbus.  0f  j^q  Tiber,  from  a  point  a  little  above  Rome, 
had  for  very  long  been  in  the  undisturbed  possession  of  the 
Etruscan  city  of  Veii :  thus  in  this  region  the  limit  of  the 
Roman  territory  was  the  river.  Between  Rome  and  the  sea 
it  is  probable  that  the  strip  of  ground  on  the  north  western 
bank  belonged  to  the  Romans,  and  gave  them  command  of 
the  channel.  On  the  south  eastern  side  of  the  Tiber  the 
legends  tell  us  that  Sextus  Tarquinius  took  Gabii  by 
treachery,  and  that  King  Tarquin  summoned  the  Latins  to 
meet  him  at  the  grove  of  Ferentina : l  hence  Gabii  and  the 
grove  of  Ferentina  lay  on  the  frontiers  of  the  Roman  lands. 
From  these  indications  we  may  believe  that  the  Roman 
territory  reached  inland  for  about  twenty  miles  from  the 

1  Livy,  1.  50-60. 


chap,  xiii.]  DEPOSED  177 

sea  on  the  south  side  of  the  Tiber  and  its  tributary  the 
Anio,  and  was  about  twelve  miles  broad  in  its  widest  part : 
its  area  then  was  about  a  hundred  and  ninety  square  miles. 
Outside  his  own  territory  Tarquin  had  powerful  supporters : 
the  princes  of  some  of  the  Etruscan  cities  were  his  friends, 
and  over  the  Latin  towns,  who  had  now  formed  themselves 
into  some  sort  of  federation,  he  had  a  hegemony  or  suzerainty 
which  empowered  him  to  dictate  their  foreign  policy  and 
make  use  of  their  armies.1  At  home  Tarquin  was  an 
oppressor:  when  the  indignation  of  the  Romans  was  hot 
against  him  and  his  son  Sextus,  the  army  made  by  Servius 
Tullius  got  its  opportunity  of  settling  what  should  be  done. 
It  met  as  a  political  assembly,  deposed  Tarquin,  and,  voting 
by  centuries,  elected  two  men  to  be  its  magistrates  for  one 
year.  The  title  prcetores  (prse-itores)  borne  by  the  new 
magistrates  indicates  that  their  chief  duty  was  to  lead  the 
Roman  armies  in  war. 

Livy  tells  us  that  the  new  magistrates  possessed  from  the 
first  all  the  power  that  had  belonged  to  the  kings,  subject 
only  to  the  limitations  (1)  that  they  bore  office       .  . 
for  one  year  only,  (2)  that  they  were  two,  and  powers 
neither  could  enforce  a  command  if  the  other  magistrates 
protested  against  it,  and  (3)  that  there  was  a   badly 
rule  which  enabled  a  citizen  to  appeal  from  the 
sentence    of   a    magistrate    to    the    mercy    of   the   people 
assembled   in   centuries.2     How  he   could   know   that  the 
Romans,  on  first  instituting  their  yearly  magistrates,  made 
these  elaborate  rules  in  regard  to  their  powers  does  not 
appear.     The  narrative  of  the  expulsion  of  Tarquin  and  the 
establishment  of  yearly  magistrates  was  put  into  writing 
for  the  first  time  by  Fabius  Pictor,  shortly  after  200  B.C., 

1  Livy,  1.  50-52 ;  Dionysius,  4.  43-48,  especially  4.  48.   1.     rvx&v  5£  rrjs 
Aartvap  rjyefiovias  6  TapKtivios. 

"  Livy,  2.  1,  and  ibid.,  2.  18.  2  and  2.  8.  2. 

M 


178  MAGISTRATES  [chap.  xiii. 

more  than  three  centuries  after  the  events  which  it  records : 
Livy  himself  says  that  for  these  occurrences  Fabius  Pictor 
was  scriptorum  antiquissimus.1  In  the  absence  of  early 
written  records  we  may  consider  what  is  probable  rather 
than  what  Livy  records,  and  may  believe  that  in  the  hurry 
of  the  deposition  of  Tarquin  the  Eoman  people  had  no 
opportunity  for  doing  more  than  electing  two  magistrates 
to  lead  them  in  war  for  a  year,  and  that  they  left  it  to 
circumstances  to  determine  the  powers  of  their  magistrates. 
Circumstances  were  such  as  tended  to  give  high  authority 
to  military  commanders.  Tarquin,  after  his  expulsion  from 
Kome,  was  still  strong  in  his  connections  with 
years  the  ^he  Etruscans  and  the  Latins.  At  his  bidding 
powers  the  Etruscans  under  Porsena  of  Clusium  attacked 

of  the  .  .... 

magistrates  the  Romans  for  the  purpose  of  restoring  him  :  it 
were  cer-  may  De  tkat  ^qj  captured  Rome,  but  they  did 
not  restore  the  tyrant.  Again  at  Tarquin's  bidding 
Mamilius  of  Tusculum,  who  had  married  Tarquin's  daughter, 
led  the  Latins  into  a  war  against  the  Romans,  which  the 
makers  of  legends  adorned  with  the  story  of  the  battle  of 
the  Lake  Regillus.  In  these  early  wars  of  the  Roman  Republic 
the  leaders  of  the  Romans  were  their  elected  magistrates : 
under  their  leadership  the  Roman  state  emerged  from  the 
wars  independent.  At  the  end  of  the  wars  the  magistrates 
certainly  enjoyed  a  high  degree  of  authority  over  all  the 
citizens:  but  whether  they  were  powerful  simply  because 
they  had  served  the  state  well,  or,  as  Livy  says,  because 
they  succeeded  to  nearly  the  same  functions  as  the  kings 
of  Rome  had  performed,  is  a  question  which  I  prefer  to 
leave  undecided. 

The  magistrates  were  in  all  cases  patricians:  it  is  not 
improbable  that  the  patricians,  who  had  most  of  the  wealth 
in  Rome,  may  have  controlled  a  majority  of  the  centuries, 

1  Livy,  1.  44. 


chap,  xiil]         SECESSION  OF  THE  PLEBS  179 

and  thus  got  members  of  their  own  order  elected  simply 
by  counting  of  votes.     The  actions  of  the  magistrates  were 
supported  by   the   authority  of  the  patricians   Supremacy 
in  the  Senate,  and  thus  after  the  independence   of  the 
of   Rome    had    been   asserted    against   Porsena  pa  ncian 
and  against  the   Latins,   the   Romans   were  governed  ex- 
clusively by  the  patrician  order. 

The  government  of  Rome  immediately  after  the  ex- 
pulsion of  Tarquin  was,  in  the  fact  that  it  was  carried  on  by 
two  magistrates  elected  yearly,  of  a  type  that  G  nm  nt 
occurred  in  the  Latin  towns  generally.  In  of  the 
most  Latin  towns  the  rulers  were  two  prsetors : 
at  Lanuvium,  Nomentum,  and  Aricia  the  magistrate  was  a 
single  dictator.1  All  these  magistrates  were  elective,  and 
therefore  in  each  Latin  town  the  burgesses  must  have  had 
the  political  privilege  of  choosing  their  rulers.  In  other 
respects  the  governments  of  the  Latin  towns  differed 
from  the  government  of  Rome.  I  do  not  know  that 
any  of  the  old  Latin  towns  had  a  senate :  and  all  the 
work  of  settling  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Latins  must 
have  been  done,  not  in  the  several  towns,  but  in  some 
central  organ  of  government  controlling  the  whole  con- 
federation. 

During  the  years  in  which  the  Romans  had  to  defend 
themselves  against  the  attacks  of  Tarquin  and  his  friends 
Porsena  and  Mamilius,  the  patrician  magistrates 
treated   the   plebeians   with   consideration    and   0f  the  Piebs 
mercy,  because  they  needed  their  zealous  service  to  the 

,  .  ,  -    Mons  Sacer. 

m  the  army :  in  particular,  during  those  years  of 
danger  common  to  all,  the  laws  in  regard  to  debt,  which 
were  as  cruel  as  the  laws  of  Attica  had  been  before  the 
reforms    of   Solon,   were    not    enforced    against    the   poor 
plebeians.     But  upon  the  death  of  Tarquin,  which  occurred 

1  Mommsen,  Hist.,  vol.  1,  p.  352  note. 


180  RETURN  OF  THE  PLEBS  [chap.  xiii. 

at  Cumse  fifteen  years  after  his  deposition,  the  laws  were 
allowed  to  take  their  course.  It  may  be  that  only  few 
Romans  were  actually  reduced  to  servitude :  but,  as  soon 
as  it  was  seen  that  the  law  about  debt  was  enforced  in  some 
cases,  servitude  was  the  lot  that  awaited  all  who  could  not 
pay  what  they  owed.  A  great  part  of  the  plebeian  order, 
rich  and  poor  alike,  promptly  resolved  that,  rather  than 
permit  such  a  fate  to  befall  their  poorer  members,  they 
would  separate  themselves  from  the  Roman  state :  and  only 
two  years  after  the  death  of  Tarquin  a  Roman  army,  when 
ordered  to  march  out  on  pretext  of  a  war  against  the 
JSquians,  disobeyed  the  command,  seceded  to  the  Mons 
Sacer,  three  miles  from  Rome,  and  there  established  itself 
in  a  fortified  camp  as  a  separate  community  to  which  all 
plebeians  might  join  themselves.1 

The  division  of  the  Romans  into  two  communities  with 
separate  places  of  habitation  obviously  could  not  last  long. 
Return  of  Both  the  Patres  and  the  Plebs  had  recently 
the  Plebs.  suffered  together  from  attacks  made  by  the 
Etruscans  and  the  Latins :  they  might  again  be  subject  to 
attacks  from  the  same  peoples  or  from  others.  If  war  came 
while  the  two  communities  were  separate,  the  Patres 
would  lack  the  plebeian  soldiers,  the  Plebs  would  be 
without  skilled  leaders  and  could  not  take  refuge  behind 
the  walls  of  Rome.  The  Plebs  agreed  to  come  back  under 
the  existing  government  of  Rome  when  the  Patres  had 
conceded  that  the  Plebs  should  have  magistrates  of  its  own, 
endowed  with  the  right  to  protect  citizens  against  the 
consuls,  and  that  no  patrician  should  be  eligible  as  one 
of  these  magistrates.2  The  new  magistrates  were  entitled 
Tribuni  Plebis,  and  described  as  being  sacroaancti.  From 
the  explanation  given  by  Festus  it  appears  that  they  were 
called  sacrosancti  because  the  Plebs  made  a  solemn  vow 

1  Livy,  2.  32.  2  Ibid.,  I.  33. 


chap,  xni.]     ALLIANCE  WITH  THE  LATINS  181 

to  take  vengeance  on  any  one  who  molested  them  in  the 
performance  of  their  functions.1 

Henceforth   there   existed   at  Rome  a   state  within  the 
state.     The  whole  community  composed  of  both  Patres  and 
Plebei  was  the  populus  Romanus :  within  it  was 
the  Plebs  Romana.     Populus  and  Plebs  had  each   was  a  state 
a  government  of  its  own,  so  that  each  can  be   Wlthinthe 

5  state. 

called  a  state.  Moreover,  the  two  governments 
were  co-ordinate  :  the  government  of  the  Plebs  was  not  sub- 
ordinate, because  the  Patricians  could  not  even  attempt  to 
diminish  its  powers  without  exposing  themselves  to  the  con- 
sequences of  the  vow  of  vengeance  which  the  plebeians  had 
taken  against  any  one  who  impeded  their  magistrates. 
The  government  of  the  Populus  belonged  to  the  patrician 
magistrates  elected  by  the  centuries:  the  government  of 
the  Plebs  was  vested  in  the  Tribuni  Plebis.  In  the  first 
instance  the  Plebs  chose  only  two  Tribunes,  who  sub- 
sequently chose  three  more  as  their  colleagues:  for  forty 
or  fifty  years  afterwards  five  Tribunes,  and  perhaps  some- 
times ten,  were  elected  every  year. 

In  the  short  time  for  which  the  Plebs  was  absent  on  the 
Mons   Sacer   one   of  the   patrician   magistrates   in    Rome, 
named  Spurius  Cassius,  took  one  of  the  most  Alliance  of 
important  steps  that  was   made  in   the  whole   Rome  with 

-r»  •  1  if  *ne  Latin 

course  of  Roman  history  by  concluding  an  League  and 
alliance  between  Rome  and  the  confederation  the  Hernici- 
of  the  Latin  cities:  seven  years  later  the  alliance  was  joined 
by  the  Hernici,  a  people  somewhat  like  the  Latins  but 
smaller,  who  lived  in  the  upper  valley  of  the  river  Trerus,  a 
tributary  of  the  Liris.  The  Latins  and  the  Hernici  were 
exposed  to  attack  from  two  peoples  of  highlanders,  the 
jEqui  on  their  northern  side  and  the  Volsci  to  the  south 
east.     The  Romans  were  for  the  time  almost  sheltered  from 

1  Festus,  p.  318. 


182  DISCORD  [chap.  xiii. 

inroads  of  the  iEqui  and  the  Volsci  by  the  presence  of  the 
Latins  and  the  Hernici :  but  they  knew  that  if  the  Latins 
and  the  Hernici  were  overwhelmed,  their  own  turn  would 
come  next.  Hence  they  prudently  resolved  and  promised 
that  they  would  give  aid  to  the  Latins  and  the  Hernici :  and 
for  nearly  a  hundred  years  they  performed  their  promise 
with  magnificent  fidelity.  Almost  every  summer  for  seventy 
years  after  the  triple  alliance  was  concluded,  Roman  armies 
were  led  into  the  field  for  the  immediate  purpose  of 
protecting  the  Latins  and  the  Hernici  and  for  the  ulterior 
object  of  guarding  the  future  security  of  Rome.  While 
fighting  almost  every  year  for  two  generations  against  the 
iEqui  and  the  Volsci,  the  Latins  and  the  Hernici  learned  to 
regard  the  Roman  soldiers  as  brothers  in  arms,  and  to 
obey  the  Roman  generals  willingly  because  they  trusted 
them. 

After  the  Plebs  returned  from  the  Mons  Sacer  to  Rome 

the  Romans  were  ruled  by  two  co-ordinate  and  independent 

governments  of  about  equal  strength.     One  was 

contests  the  government  of  the  Populus  vested  in  the 

between    e     ^        patrician  military  commanders  elected  by 

patrician  and  r  J  J 

the  plebeian  the  centuries :  the  other  was  the  government  of 
the  Plebs  entrusted  to  the  civilian  Tribunes,  who 
were  always  plebeians.  The  respective  powers  of  the  two 
governments  were  at  the  first  extremely  ill  defined :  hence 
for  forty  or  fifty  years  the  two  governments  came  constantly 
into  sharp  conflicts,  which  had  to  be  settled  not  by  law, 
since  there  was  no  law  governing  their  respective  powers, 
but  according  to  the  general  opinion  of  the  community  as 
to  what  was  needed  for  its  welfare.  The  result  of  these 
conflicts  was  determined  usually  by  the  need  which  the 
Romans  felt  of  success  in  their  wars  against  the  Volsci 
and  the  ^Equi.  This  need  was  felt  more  strongly  by 
the    patrician    military    commanders    and    the    patrician 


chap,  xiii.]  DECEMVIRI  183 

senate,  both  of  whom  understood  the  supreme  importance 
of  fulfilling  their  engagements  with  their  allies,  than  by 
the  civilian  Tribunes,  who  cared  mainly  for  the  interests 
of  the  plebeians  at  home.  The  patricians  knew  that  they 
must  have  strong  armies  who  fought  well.  But  if  they 
offended  the  plebeians  or  the  plebeian  Tribunes,  they 
found  that  they  had  no  army,  or  only  an  army  which 
would  not  fight.  Hence  they  were  compelled  to  make 
some  concessions:  but  concessions  which  did  not  satisfy 
the  Tribunes  only  made  them  more  resolute  in  asserting 
their  powers. 

The  strife  between  the  orders  became  intolerable,  because 
it  impeded  the  success  of  the  Roman  armies:   and  at  last 
the   patricians    assented    to    the   wish    of    the 
plebeians  that  for  a  year  there  should   be  no 
more    elections    of   the    ordinary   patrician    military  com- 
manders or  of  plebeian  Tribunes,  but  that  in  their  stead 
ten  commissioners,  Decemviri,  should   be   elected  for  that 
year  with   power  to   reform    the    laws   and   make  a   new 
constitution.      The    election    of    the    Decemvirs    was    in 
itself   a   revolution,   because    there   was   to   be  no    appeal 
to  the  people  from  their  judicial  decisions.     The  Decemvirs 
governed    for    their  year   with   justice,   brought    out    ten 
tables  of  laws  which  the  people  accepted  gladly,  and  amid 
the  great   popularity   they  had  won   they   persuaded   the 
people   to  elect  a  second  body  of  Decemvirs  to  complete 
their  work.     These  second  Decemvirs  governed  like  tyrants 
for  their  year  of  office,  and  when  it  expired,  knowing  that 
if  they  became  private  citizens  they  would  be  punished, 
tried    to  retain    their   absolute   power  by   force.      One  of 
them,  Appius  Claudius,  attempted  to  employ  his  usurped 
authority   for   the  gratification    of    his    lusts.      A    tumult 
ensued,  and  a   mutiny   of  an   army  and   a   new  secession 
of    the   Plebs    to    the    Mons   Sacer.      In    order   to   induce 


184  PERIODS  [chap.  xiii. 

the  Plebs  to  return  to  Rome  the  Patricians  found  it 
necessary  to  insist  that  the  Decemvirs  should  lay  down 
their  usurped  authority  and  to  agree  that  the  two  govern- 
ments of  the  Populus  and  the  Plebs  should  be  restored, 
that  the  number  of  the  Tribunes  should  be  raised  to  ten, 
and  that  the  inviolable  sanctity  of  their  persons  which  had 
hitherto  been  gained  for  them  only  by  the  row  of  the  Plebs 
to  avenge  any  violence  done  to  them,  should  be  from  that 
time  assured  by  legal  enactment.1  The  two  co-ordinate 
governments  of  Rome  were  therefore  to  continue  their 
perpetual  duel  with  improved  chances  for  the  champions 
of  the  plebeians. 

From  the  time  of  the  Decemvirate  we  possess  a  history  of 
Rome  in  the  sense  that  we  know  not  only  the  general  course 

of  Roman   foreign    policy,   but   also   the    chief 
Roman  features   of   the   Roman   constitution :    for   the 

first  century,  however,  after  the  deposition  of 
the  Decemvirs  dates  are  known  only  approximately,  and  for 
nearly  two  centuries  many  of  the  stories  recorded  about 
individual  Romans  are  probably  inventions.  The  whole 
history  of  Rome  divides  itself  into  three  great  periods, 
which  may  be  characterised  as  follows :  First,  till  264  B.C., 
Rome  as  an  Italian  power ;  Second,  from  264  B.C.  to  46  B.C., 
Rome  as  possessor  of  large  dependencies  across  the  sea, 
whose  government  the  Romans  neglected;  Third,  from 
46  B.C.  to  476  A.D.,  Rome  and  its  provinces  gradually 
consolidated  into  an  Empire  under  one  government.  The 
present  chapter  deals  with  the  first  of  these  periods,  in 
which  Rome  was  only  an  Italian  power.  That  period 
divides  itself  into  two  sections :  (1)  till  the  conquest  of  the 
Latins  by  the  Romans  in  338  B.C.;  (2)  from  338  B.C.  to 
264  B.C.  the  conquest  of  Italy. 

1  Livy,  3.  44-55. 


chap,  xiit.]  POPULUS  AND  PLEBS  185 

(1)  ROME  TO  THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  LATINS 

A  convenient  point  of  time  for  viewing  the  Roman 
constitution  occurs  about  twenty  years  after  the  deposition 
of  the  second  Decemvirs.     Under  that  constitu- 

-r,  ,  nil        Constitution 

tion  Kome  was,  as  we  have  seen,  controlled  by  ofRome 

two  co-ordinate  and  separate  governments  :  one  after  the 

L  °  t         Decemvirate. 

was  the  government  of  the  populus,  managing 
those  affairs  which  affected  the  welfare  of  the  whole  com- 
munity :  the  other  was  the  government  of  the  plebs,  attend- 
ing to  the  interests  of  the  plebeian  order.  In  the  government 
of  the  populus  the  chief  organs  were  (1)  magistrates  called 
curule,  from  the  sella  curulis,  or  chair  of  state  in  which  they 
sat,  (2)  the  senate,  (3)  the  assemblies  of  the  centuries.  The 
government  of  the  plebs  was  vested  in  (1)  plebeian  magis- 
trates and  (2)  a  plebeian  assembly. 

In  the  government  of  the  populus  the  magistrates  were 
these.  Firstly,  there  were  at  all  times  the  two  military 
commanders  elected  by  the  centuries  to  bear  Government 
office  for  a  year,  who  had  originally  been  called  of  the 
prcetores  or  leaders  in  war,  but  who  were  now  (i)  Magis- 
generally  known  as  consules  or  colleagues.  In  trates- 
times  of  danger  there  was  also  a  dictator  holding  office 
simultaneously  with  the  consuls,  but  with  superior  power : 
the  dictator  was  not  elected,  but  was  nominated  by  one  of 
the  consuls  to  hold  command  for  six  months.  Once 
in  every  few  years  two  censors  were  elected  for  the 
purpose  of  making  a  new  register  of  the  citizens.  The 
consuls  and  the  dictator  had  the  imperium,  or  right  to 
give  commands  of  all  sorts.  The  dictator  must  be  obeyed 
in  all  cases  and  everywhere:  the  consuls  must  be  obeyed 
in  every  respect  when  they  were  in  military  command  out- 
side the  city  and  its  precinct :  but  when  they  were  within 
the  city  walls,  or  within  a  precinct  which  extended  for  a 


186  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  [chap.  xiii. 

mile  from  the  walls,  any  of  their  commands  could  be 
deprived  of  coercive  force  by  the  intervention  of  any 
one  of  the  tribunes.  The  censors  did  not  in  practice  issue 
any  commands  except  those  that  were  necessary  for  making 
the  register  of  citizens :  but  their  decisions  in  regard  to  the 
amount  of  the  man's  property  and  his  public  obligations 
were  final  and  could  not  be  questioned. 

The  Senate  derived  its  position  and  functions  in  unbroken 
descent  from  the  times  of  the  kings.     It  was  a  body  of 

(2)  The  counsellors  whose  business  was  to  give  advice 
Senate.  when  it  was  asked  to  do  so  by  the  chief  executive 
ruler  of  the  state.  Its  members  held  their  position  as 
counsellors  for  life:  at  first  they  were  nominated  by  the 
king  and  afterwards  by  the  prcetores :  whether  at  the  time 
of  our  survey  they  were  selected  by  the  consuls  or  by  the 
censors  is  not  quite  certain :  but  the  evidence  inclines  me 
to  think  they  were  chosen  by  the  consuls.  The  senate 
could  be  summoned  to  meet  by  a  consul  or  a  dictator  :  but 
when  it  had  met  it  had  no  right  to  offer  advice  except  on 
those  matters  on  which  the  magistrate  who  convoked  it 
had  asked  its  opinion,  and  when  its  opinion  had  been  given 
the  magistrate  was  free  to  follow  the  advice  or  disregard  it 
as  he  chose. 

The  gathering  of  the  centuries  was  the  only  assembly  in 
which  all  the  citizens  came  together  for  any  public  business. 

(3)  -pjjg  At  the  time  of  my  survey,  about  twenty  years 
assembly  of  after  the  decemvirate,  the  number  of  the 
(i)  Composi-  centuries  is  not  known  with  complete  certainty : 
tion-  it  may  have  been  already  fixed  at  a  hundred  and 
ninety  three,  the  number  at  which  it  stood  from  about 
268  B.C.  till  the  end  of  the  republican  government  of  Rome, 
or  it  may  have  been  smaller.  By  365  B.C.,  about  eighty  five 
years  after  the  decemvirate,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  a 
hundred  and  ninety  three  was   the   settled  and  invariable 


chap,  xiii.]  POPULUS  187 

number.  Our  earliest  description  of  the  centuries  and 
classes  dates  from  about  268  B.C.  or  possibly  a  little  later : 
it  gives  the  number  as  a  hundred  and  ninety  three,  and 
therefore  about  268  B.C.  a  hundred  and  ninety  three  was 
the  number.  But  in  the  description  the  numbers  of 
centuries  of  infantry  in  all  the  classes  down  to  the  fourth 
inclusive  are  settled  by  the  numbers  of  men  required  to  fill 
the  ranks  in  the  phalanxes:  therefore  the  numbers  were 
fixed  at  a  time  when  the  Roman  army  fought  in  phalanxes. 
But  we  know  for  certain  that  by  340  B.C.  the  use  of  the 
phalanx  had  been  entirely  abandoned : x  and  there  is  good 
reason  to  believe  that  its  abandonment  and  the  substitution 
for  it  of  a  more  effective  order  of  battle  was  due  to  the 
genius  of  the  great  general,  M.  Furius  Camillus.  But  by 
365  B.C.  Camillus  was  already  dead,  and  if  at  his  death  the 
phalanx  was  a  thing  of  the  past,  the  numbers  of  the 
centuries  must  have  been  fixed  before  he  died.  Thus 
365  B.C.  is  the  latest  date  to  which  we  can  probably  assign 
the  fixing  of  the  number  at  a  hundred  and  ninety  three : 
from  many  circumstances  in  Roman  history  it  seems  likely 
that  that  number  may  have  been  adopted  at  least  as  early 
as  405  B.C.,  when  the  Romans  began  their  siege  of  Veii. 
When  the  number  had  been  fixed  there  were  eighteen 
centuries  of  cavalry,  and  the  first  class  of  infantry  contained 
eighty  centuries,  who  filled  the  first  four  ranks  of  four 
phalanxes :  the  second,  third,  and  fourth  -had  twenty 
centuries  apiece  to  make  up  the  remaining  three  ranks. 
The  fifth  class  had  thirty  centuries  of  men  armed  with  darts 
and  slings  who  skirmished  outside  the  phalanxes:  there 
were  also  two  centuries  of  artificers  and  two  of  musicians 
and  one  century  comprising  probably  some  thousands  of 
citizens  whose  poverty  exempted  them  from  any  compulsory 
service  in  the  army. 

1  Livy,  8.  8. 


188  CENTUEIES  [chap.  xiii. 

The  work  of  the  assembly  of  centuries  consisted  in  the 
election  of  consuls  and  censors,  the  passing  of  new  laws,  and 
,  ,  «       ...     occasionally  the  decision  of  a  question  of  peace  or 

(3)  Assembly  *  .... 

of  centuries,  war :  but  as  there  was  not  much  activity  in  legis- 
(2)  unc  ions,  ^j^  ancj  questions  of  peace  and  war  were 
usually  settled  by  the  obvious  necessity  of  defence  against 
aggressive  enemies,  the  assembly  was  mainly  an  elective 
body.  After  the  number  of  centuries  was  raised  to  a 
hundred  and  ninety  three,  the  cavalry  had  eighteen  votes 
and  the  first  class  of  infantry  had  eighty  out  of  a  total  of  a 
hundred  and  ninety  three.  Before  the  number  of  centuries 
was  raised  to  a  hundred  and  ninety  three,  it  is  probable 
that  there  were  only  two  phalanxes,  and  every  class  of 
infantry  had  only  half  as  many  centuries  as  it  had  under 
the  later  arrangement :  thus  under  the  earlier  arrangement 
we  may  suppose  that  the  cavalry  and  the  first  class  taken 
together  had  fifty  eight  votes  out  of  a  total  of  about  a 
hundred  and  eight.  It  follows  that  both  under  the  earlier 
arrangement  and  the  later  the  rich  men  in  the  cavalry  and 
the  well-to-do  yeomen  of  the  first  class  had  between  them 
more  than  half  the  total  votes,  and  therefore  the  rich  class 
and  the  class  that  was  raised  far  above  poverty,  though  they 
numbered  much  less  than  half  of  the  citizens,  settled  the 
result  of  elections.  The  assembly  then  of  the  centuries  was 
well  adapted  to  give  expression  to  the  wishes  of  the  most 
independent  and  intelligent  classes  of  the  citizens:  but  in 
elections  it  was  subject  to  severe  restraint  exercised  by  its 
presiding  officer,  who  was  always  a  consul  or  a  dictator.  It 
may  be  suspected  that  the  plebeian  order  controlled  more 
than  half  the  votes  in  the  assembly,  since  most  of  the  men 
in  the  first  four  ranks  of  the  phalanx  were  probably 
plebeians,  and  it  is  certain  that  none  but  plebeians  served  in 
the  rear  ranks  or  among  the  skirmishers.  Hence  we  may 
conjecture  that  the  assembly  might  sometimes  wish  to  elect 


chap,  xin.]     GOVEKNMENT  OF  THE  PLEBS  189 

a  plebeian  consul,  and  so  to  end  the  strife  between  the  two 
orders.  No  such  wish,  however,  could  take  effect :  the 
presiding  officer  had  the  duty  of  handing  on  the  imperium 
which  he  possessed  to  his  successor:  and,  if  the  assembly 
chose  a  successor  whom  he  deemed  to  be  disqualified,  he 
could  refuse  to  give  him  the  imperium,  or  to  constitute  him 
as  consul.  The  existing  consuls  and  dictators,  who  had 
the  sole  right  of  presiding  in  centuriate  assemblies,  were 
patricians,  and  they  steadily  rejected  the  idea  of  conveying 
the  imperium  to  a  plebeian,  and  therefore  refused  to  accept 
the  vote  of  any  century  for  any  but  a  patrician.1 

In  the  government  of  the  Plebs  the  magistrates  were  the 
Tribunes  and   the  iEdiles  :   the   Tribunes  alone  possessed 
great  political   power.     During  the  long  wars 
against  the  Volsci  and  the  iEqui,  they  had  been   0f  the  Plebs: 
able  to  influence  the  plebeians  to  serve  or  not  to   W  Ma&is- 

trates. 

serve,  to  fight  well  or  ill :  and  in  consequence  the 
importance  of  their  office  had  grown.  After  the  Decemvirate 
not  only  was  the  inviolability  of  every  tribune's  person  secured 
by  law,  but  it  was  recognised  that  within  the  walls  of  Rome 
and  its  precinct,  a  mile  broad  outside,  a  tribune  could  forbid 
a  consul  to  issue  any  particular  order,  and,  if  he  had  issued 
it,  could  deprive  it  of  legal  force.  The  power  of  interven- 
tion, which  was  called  intercessio,  enabled  the  tribunes  to 
protect  citizens  from  unjust  sentences  of  consuls,  and  even 
to  prevent  a  consul  from  levying  an  army.  The  Roman 
army  was  not  permanent,  but  dispersed  every  year  in  the 
autumn :  when  a  new  army  was  required  the  enrolment 
took  place  on  the  Capitol,  within  the  one  mile  precinct, 
and  therefore  the  tribunes  could,  if  they  chose,  put  a  stop 
to  it.  The  tribunes  had  also  the  power  of  calling  gatherings 
of  the  plebeians,  called  concilia  plebis,  and  proposing  resolu- 
tions   for    their    acceptance.     The   work   of    the   tribunes, 

1  Livy,  3.  21.  8. 


190  GOVERNMENT  OF  [chap.  xiii. 

except  when  they  proposed  a  resolution  to  a  concilium  plebis, 
consisted  rather  in  prohibiting  than  in  taking  the  initiative. 
The   only  purely  plebeian  assembly  was   the   concilium 
plebis.     Ever  since  the  first  secession  to  the  Mons  Sacer  the 
.  plebs    had    been   wont   to    hold    meetings   for 

assembly:  elections  of  tribunes  and  for  other  purposes, 
concilium        -por  aD0Ut  twenty  years  after  that  first  secession 

plebis.     Its  J  J 

original  the   meetings   were   attended  by   all  plebeians, 

we  ness.  including  both  plebeian  landowners  who  were 
independent,  and  by  clients  of  the  patricians  who  were 
dependent  on  their  patrician  patrons  and  could  be  influenced 
by  them:  and  all  who  attended  the  meetings  could  give 
votes.  At  the  end  of  the  twenty  years  it  was  found  that 
the  votes  of  the  clients  enabled  the  patricians  to  interfere 
effectively  in  the  elections  of  tribunes  and  to  get  men 
chosen  who  were  subservient  to  the  patricians.1  Hence 
the  more  independent  of  the  plebeians  wished  to  deprive 
the  clients  of  their  votes,  and  they  were  able  to  attain 
their  desire  by  means  of  the  lists  of  tribesmen  prepared  in 
the  census. 

By  this  time  all  the  freehold  land  held  by  Romans  both 
within  the  town  walls  and  in  the  rural  territory  had  been 
strengthened  divided  into  tribes,  and  lists  had  at  the  census 
by  the  law  of  been  prepared  of  all  the  freeholds  and  of  their 
owners:  no  man  was  a  tribesman  unless  his 
name  appeared  in  the  lists  of  freeholders.  By  the  Publilian 
law  of  Volero,  passed  about  twenty  years  after  the  first 
secession  to  the  Mons  Sacer,  it  was  enacted  that  elections  of 
tribunes  should  be  conducted  by  the  tribes  in  which  none 
but  landowners  were  included  :  every  plebeian  tribesman 
was  to  have  a  vote  which  helped  to  settle  how  his  tribe 
should   vote,    and   in    the    election    every    tribe   had   one 

1  Livy,  2.  56.  3,  says  the  patricians  had  'potestatem  per  clientium  suffragia 
creandi  quos  vellent  tribunos.' 


chap,  xiii.]  THE  PLEBS  191 

vote.1  At  the  time  of  my  survey,  twenty  years  after  the 
Decern  virate,  the  Publilian  law  of  Volero  governed  the  pro- 
ceedings in  all  meetings  of  the  concilium  plebis:  only 
tribesmen  had  votes  in  their  tribes  and  one  vote  was 
recorded  by  every  tribe. 

A  concilium  plebis  was  summoned  by  a  tribune,  who  when 
it  met  was  its  president :  its  business  consisted  sometimes  in 
electing  tribunes  and  sediles,  sometimes  in  voting  Business  of 
on  proposals  made  by  the  presiding  tribune.  A  the  concilium 
proposal  of  a  resolution  when  made  by  the  pre-  p  e 
siding  officer  was  called  rogatio :  if  it  was  accepted  by  the 
votes  of  the  tribes  in  the  concilium  plebis  it  became  a 
plebiscitum,  or  resolution  of  the  plebs.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  every  plebiscitum  was  binding  on  all  plebeians:  in 
regard  to  the  question  whether  it  was  binding  on  patricians 
also,  we  get  nothing  but  an  inaccurate  and  misleading 
statement  from  Livy,  who  tells  us  that  immediately  after 
the  deposition  of  the  second  Decemvirs  the  consuls  Valerius 
and  Horatius  had  passed  a  law  in  the  comitia  centuriata 
to  the  effect  that  all  plebiscita  should  be  binding  on  the 
populus,  and  therefore  on  patricians  and  plebeians  alike.2 
His  assertion  is  undoubtedly  in  some  way  incorrect,  because 
some  sixty  years  after  the  time  of  our  survey  the  patricians 
were  able  for  several  years  to  prevent  the  famous  "Licinian 
Rogations,  after  they  had  been  converted  into   plebiscita, 

1  Livy  in  describing  the  Publilian  law  of  Volero  (2.  56-60)  needlessly 
perplexes  his  readers  by  saying  that  it  enacted  that  tribunes  should  be 
elected  in  the  comitia  tributa.  The  comitia  tributa,  properly  so  called,  was 
an  assembly  in  which  all  landowners,  patrician  and  plebeian  alike,  took  part 
in  the  voting.  But  Livy  did  not  in  the  least  mean  to  say  that  patricians 
were  to  take  part  in  the  elections  of  tribunes  :  he  shows  thia  quite  clearly 
by  the  words  summoveri  prozterquam  qui  suffragium  ineant  (2.  56.  11),  and 
(2.  60.  5),  summovendis  patribus.  When  he  speaks  of  comitia  tributa  he 
means  an  assembly  of  plebeian  tribesmen  voting  by  tribes.  If  he  had  written 
accurately  he  would  have  said  in  2.  56.  3,  ut  plebeii  magistrate  tributim  in 
concilio  plebis  fierent. 

2  Livy,  3.  55.  3,  '  ut,  quod  tributim  plebes  jussisset,  populum  teneret.' 


192  AIMS  OF  THE  PLEBEIANS         [chap.  xiii. 

from  obtaining  the  force  of  law.  At  the  time  then  of  our 
survey  plebiscita  were  not  binding  on  the  patricians  till  they 
had  in  some  way  or  other  received  a  confirmation  from  the 
government  of  the  populus,  or  of  the  whole  Roman 
community. 

Under  the  constitution  as  it  stood  twenty  years  after  the 
Decemvirate  the  patricians  alone  could  get  access  to  a 
The  curule   magistracy,   and   therefore  none   but    a 

condition  patrician  could  be  commander  of  an  army,  and 
of  the  the  patricians   had   the  entire  management  of 

Plebeians.  foreign  policy :  the  plebeians  furnished  probably 
almost  all  the  infantry  and  some  small  part  of  the  cavalry. 
The  plebeian  yeoman  or  peasant  had  to  tear  himself  away 
from  his  farm  or  his  plot  of  ground  for  the  summer  months 
when  his  fields  needed  care  and  his  harvest  was  ready  for 
gathering :  the  rich  plebeian  in  Rome  served  in  the  cavalry, 
but  not  even  he  could  hope  under  the  constitution  as  it 
stood  to  command  an  army  or  to  take  a  part  in  settling  a 
question  of  foreign  policy.  The  rich  plebeians  thought 
they  were  no  less  capable  than  the  patricians  of  acting  as 
generals  or  as  senators  :  the  poor  plebeians  wished  that  men 
of  their  own  order  might  become  generals,  because  they 
knew  by  experience  that  some  patrician  commanders  had 
acted  harshly  and  even  cruelly  towards  their  soldiers. 
Therefore  the  whole  plebeian  order  eagerly  desired  that  the 
curule  offices  might  be  thrown  open  to  plebeians.  Towards 
the  attainment  of  their  desires  they  were  helped  by  the 
exigencies  of  long  successions  of  foreign  wars,  which  for 
ninety  years  from  the  time  of  my  survey  imposed  on  the 
patrician  magistrates  the  necessity  of  conciliating  the 
plebeians  in  order  that  they  might  get  soldiers  to  fill 
the  ranks  of  their  armies. 

For  more  than  a  century  after  the  Decemvirate  the 
Romans  were  engaged  in  constant  wars  with  their  neigh- 


chap,  xiil]  FOREIGN  WARS  193 

bours.  For  the  first  sixty  years  a  campaign  to  check  the 
Volscian  and  iEquian  highlanders  occurred  nearly  every 
summer :  and,  though  when  half  the  sixty  years  poreig-n  wars 
had  elapsed  the  Roman  commander  A.  Postumius  of  the  Romans 
Tubertus  won  a  great  victory  over  the  Volscians,  Decemvirate 
any  relief  that   resulted   from  his  success  was  to  338  B.C. 

(i)  Against 

more  than  counterbalanced  by  attacks  on  the  theVoisci 
Roman  territory  undertaken  by  the  strong  andthe^qui- 
Etruscan  city  of  Veii.  Eventually  the  Romans  with  the 
aid  of  their  allies  the  Latins  and  the  Hernici  besieged 
Veii  for  ten  years,  keeping  their  armies  for  the  first 
time  employed  on  active  service  in  the  winter  as  well 
as  the  summer.  When  at  last  the  beleaguered  city  was 
captured  and  destroyed  by  the  Roman  dictator  M.  Furius 
Camillus,  and  devoted  to  perpetual  desolation,  the  Roman 
body  politic  became  for  a  time  conspicuously  the  strongest 
power  in  central  Italy.  The  faithful  protection  that  the 
Romans  had  long  given  to  the  Latins  and  the  Hernici  had  been 
gradually  converted  into  a  protectorate  over  them,  so  that 
the  Latins  and  the  Hernici  were  no  longer  independent  but 
had  to  adopt  any  foreign  and  military  policy  that  the 
Romans  dictated  to  them :  no  one  dared  to  oppose  the 
combined  forces  of  the  Romans  and  their  helpers  except 
the  iEquian  highlanders,  and  they  were  defeated. 

But  the  Romans  only  enjoyed  their  newly  gained  ascend- 
ency in  central  Italy  for  six  years.     About  sixty  years  after 
the  Decemvirate,  in  390  B.C.,  a  great  horde  of 
Gauls  descended  from    the   valley  of   the   Po    ofRome, 

and  captured  and  burned  all  Rome  except  the   39oB.C- 
r  r  360  B.C. 

Capitol.     They   tried  for  months   to   take  the 

Capitol  also :   but  when  they  had  suffered  from  pestilence 

they  consented  to  depart  from  Rome  on  receiving  a  large 

ransom  in  gold.     After  their  departure  it  was  found  that 

the  Romans  by  losing  all  their  strong  fortresses  except  the 


194  FOREIGN  [chap.  xm. 

Capitol  had  also  lost  their  ascendency  in  central  Italy.    The 

year  after  the  Gauls  departed,  the  Latins  and  Hernici,  to 

whom  dependence  on  Rome  had  long  been  irksome,  thought 

they  could  easily  stand  alone  now  that  Veii  was  destroyed, 

and  saw  also  that,  even  if  they  needed  a  bulwark,  Rome  in 

its  weakness  would  be  of  little  use :  and  accordingly  all  the 

Hernici  and  all  the  Latin  towns  except  Tusculum  declared 

that  their  alliance  with  the  Romans  was  ended.1    For  about 

thirty  years  after  the  capture  of  Rome  the  Romans  had  to 

wage  wars  against  the  Volsci  and  JEqui  unaided :  sometimes 

they  found  that  some  of  the  Latin  or  Hernican  towns  were 

giving  help  to  their  enemies :  and  for  these  thirty  years  they 

were  exposed  to  more  prolonged  danger  than  they  had  known 

for  a  century  past. 

At  the  end,  however,  of  the  thirty  years,  about  360  B.C., 

the  grievous   misfortunes   of    the   Romans  were  in   some 

degree  lightened.2     At  that  time  a  new  horde  of 

strength  of      Gauls  came  into  Latium,  and  though  they  were  at 

Rome,  first  welcomed  by  the  Latin  town  of  Tibur,  and 

360  B.C.  J 

two    years    later  by    Prseneste,3    the    Latms   in 

general  soon  saw  that  they  were  dangerous  visitors,  and 
in  358  B.C.  were  glad  to  make  a  new  alliance  with  the 
Romans : 4  from  what  followed  it  would  seem  that  in  this 
alliance  the  Romans  and  the  Latins  were  nominally  placed 
on  an  equal  footing.  The  new  alliance  relieved  the  Romans 
from  the  worst  of  their  apprehensions,  at  any  rate  for  the 
few  years  during  which  the  allies  held  firmly  together.  The 
Gauls  repeated  their  inroads  into  Latium  or  its  neighbour- 
hood in  the  next  twelve  years,  and  during  that  time  the 
Latins  acted  in  support  of  the  Romans  against  the  invaders. 
But  after  348  B.C.,  when  the  Gauls  made  their  last  inroad, 
there  was  no  common  danger  to  hold  the  Latins  and  the 

1  Livy,  6.  2.  3.  3  Polybius,  2.  18,  19. 

a  Livy,  7.  9.  and  12.  4  Ibid.,  7.  12.  7. 


chap,  xni.]  WARS  195 

Romans  together  in  friendship.      The  Latins  were  probably 
in  doubt  whether  they  or  the  Romans  were  the  stronger,  and 
were  inclined  to  engage  in  a  rivalry  with  them 
to  decide  which  should  be  the  dominant  power  between 
in  central  Italy.     The  Romans  were  willing  and   Rome  and 

J  °  the  Latins. 

even  eager  to  help  any  people  decidedly  weaker 
than  themselves  which  was  likely  under  their  protection  to 
become  a  useful  and  obedient  dependency,  but  they  did  not 
wish  to  promote  the  interests  of  any  people  which  might 
become  their  rival.  Hence  there  was  little  prospect  that 
the  alliance  between  Rome  and  the  Latins  would  last  long 
after  the  Gauls  were  gone.  It  ended  in  the  following  way. 
The  Campanians  of  Capua,  in  the  plain  near  Naples,  being 
menaced  by  the  strong  Sabellian  people  of  Samnium,  were 
glad  to  become  the  subjects  of  Rome  on  any  terms  that  the 
Romans  chose  to  grant.  The  Romans  accepted  their  offer  : 
and  then  the  Romans,  with  whom  the  Campanians  were  now 
incorporated,  joined  with  the  Latins  in  making  war  on  the 
Samnites :  but,  after  the  allies  had  won  some  victories  over 
the  Samnites,  the  Romans,  thinking  that  the  Latins  were 
inclined  to  desert  them  and  the  Campanians  to  try  to 
recover  their  independence,  concluded  a  separate  peace 
with  Samnium.  After  taking  this  step  they  could  not 
expect  that  the  Latins  would  be  their  friends  :  and  very 
soon  they  had  to  wage  a  war  against  the  combined  forces  of 
the  Latins,  the  Volscians,  and  the  Campanians.  The  war 
was  evenly  contested,  but  after  it  had  lasted  two  years,  the 
Romans  in  338  B.C.  were  completely  victorious,  and  there- 
upon the  Latins,  the  Volscians,  and  Campanians  were 
brought  permanently  under  the  suzerainty  of  Rome. 

During  the  period  of  more  than  a  century  that  elapsed 
between  the  Decern virate  and  the  conquest  of  the  Latins 
the  patricians  needed  all  the  soldiers  they  could  get  for 
their  foreign  wars :  and  in  order  to  get  them  they  were 


196  CONCESSIONS  [chap.  xiii. 

compelled  to  make  concessions  to  the  plebeians.  About  five 
years  after  the  Decemvirate  they  agreed  that  marriages 
Concessions  between  patricians  and  plebeians  should  be  legal, 
to  the  and  the  children  of  such  marriages  should  follow 

(i)  Military  the  rank  of  the  father.  Soon  afterwards,  hoping 
Tribunes.  ^0  appease  the  desire  of  the  plebeians  to  be 
admitted  to  the  curule  magistracies  but  yet  determined 
not  to  give  them  the  consular  dignity,  they  proposed  to 
put  the  consular  power  in  commission,  and  to  enact  that 
instead  of  two  consuls  there  should  be  three,  four,  or  six 
military  tribunes  with  consular  power.  For  about  twenty 
years  the  magistrates  possessing  the  imperium  were  some- 
times three  or  four  military  tribunes,  but  more  often  two 
consuls :  then  for  about  fifty  years  ending  in  367  B.C.  they 
were  usually  six  or  four  military  tribunes. 

The  compromise  of  putting  the  consular  power  in  com- 
mission gave  no  satisfaction :  plebeians  were  seldom  elected 
(2)  Licinian  as  military  tribunes,  and  the  division  of  command 
Rogations,  among  many  generals  led  to  inefficiency  in  war. 
During  the  thirty  years  of  extreme  danger  from  foreign 
enemies,  which  followed  the  capture  of  Rome  by  the  Gauls, 
the  plebeians  resolved  that  they  would  gain  admission  to  the 
actual  consulship :  and  in  367  B.C.  they  got  it  by  means  of 
the  Licinian  Rogations,  one  of  which  enacted  that  consuls, 
not  military  tribunes,  should  be  elected,  and  in  every  year 
one  consul  should  be  a  plebeian.  The  patricians,  after  the 
Rogations  had  been  voted  in  a  concilium  plebis  and  had 
therefore  become  plebiscita,  long  refused  to  allow  them  to 
become  law :  but  in  367  B.C.,  under  the  extreme  pressure  of 
danger  from  outside,  they  gave  way :  the  plebeians  on  their 
side  consented  that  the  judicial  duties  of  the  consuls  should 
be  taken  from  them  and  entrusted  to  a  new  magistrate, 
called  Praetor,  who  was  to  be  always  a  patrician. 

The  acceptance  by  the  patricians  of  the  rule  that  one 


chap,  xiii.]  TO  THE  PLEBEIANS  197 

consul  must  always  be  a  plebeian  would  have  sufficed  to  end 
the  bitterness  of  the  strife  between  the  orders,  if  the  rule 
had  been  faithfully  observed.     For  eight  or  ten 
years  the  patricians  saw  that  it  was  necessary   enforcement 
to  let  it  be  enforced,   because  the  Latins  and   Lidnian 
Hernici  were    alienated   from   the  Romans    or   Rogation, 
hostile,  and  therefore  the  Roman  plebs  must  be 
kept  content :    but    in   358   B.C.,   as   we    have    seen,   they 
obtained  a  new  alliance  with  the  Latins.    After  that  the 
Licinian  law  about   the  consulate  was   indeed  obeyed  for 
one  year  more:   but  in  356  B.C.  the  patrician  magistrate 
who  held  the  election  of  consuls  insisted  on  creating  two 
patricians,  and  in  the  next  twelve  years  there  were  seven  in 
which  neither  consul  was  a  plebeian.    At  last,  in  342  B.C., 
when  the  Romans  were  beginning  a  war  with  the  Samnites 
and  thought  that  a  war  with  the  Latins  might  soon  be  upon 
them,  the  patricians  abandoned  their  foolish  evasions  of  the 
law  to  which  they  had  consented,  and  thenceforth  one  of 
the  consuls  was  a  plebeian. 

Throughout  the  century  and  a  half  or  more  from  the 
expulsion  of  Tarquin  to  the  conquest  of  the  Latins  a  wise 
foreign  policy  was  to  the  Romans  as  the  breath  The  Senate 
of  their  nostrils :  and  at  the  same  time  adhesion  to  338  BC- 
to  such  a  policy  was  a  task  requiring  extraordinary 
prudence  and  perseverance.  The  Roman  stronghold  had 
originally  grown  to  importance  as  a  barrier  for  the  Latins 
against  enemies  on  the  north  of  the  Tiber :  it  must  continue 
to  do  the  work  of  protecting  its  southern  neighbours  if  it 
meant  to  keep  or  increase  its  importance,  and  at  the  same 
time  it  could  not  do  that  work  unless  its  citizens  would 
submit  to  great  hardships  and  sacrifices.  The  difficult  task 
of  ensuring  that  the  Latins  and  Hernici  were  duly  protected 
and  of  controlling  the  rest  of  the  foreign  policy  of  Rome 
could  only  be  performed  under  the  guidance  of  a  permanent 


198  SENATE  [chap.  xtit. 

body  of  skilled  and  experienced  advisers.  Such  a  body  was 
found  in  the  senate.  On  all  questions  of  foreign  policy  and 
many  questions  of  home  policy  the  curule  magistrates,  when 
in  doubt,  were  wont  to  summon  and  consult  the  senate,  and, 
though  they  were  not  compelled  to  follow  its  advice,  they 
did  follow  it,  and  therefore  the  opinion  of  the  senate 
determined  the  policy  of  the  community. 

The  magistrate  who  had  summoned  the  senate  presided 
over  its  session :  he  asked  the  senators  in  such  order  as  he 
Procedure  in  chose  their  opinion  on  the  point  at  issue,  and  no 
the  senate.  senator  could  speak  till  the  presiding  magistrate 
called  on  him.  When  the  presiding  magistrate  had  satisfied 
himself,  either  with  or  without  a  counting  of  votes,  what 
view  was  approved  by  the  majority,  that  opinion  was 
expressed  in  a  resolution  called  senatus  consultum.1  In 
consequence  of  the  method  of  procedure  at  a  sitting  of  the 
senate  the  presiding  magistrate  was  able  to  ensure  that  the 
senators  who  spoke  early  and  gave  a  tone  to  the  deliberation 
were  men  who  had  gained  experience  in  curule  magistracies, 
and  thoroughly  understood  what  was  needed  for  keeping 
the  policy  of  the  Romans  consistent. 

We  have  from  an  early  period  good  means  of  judging 
what  kinds  of  subjects  were  those  on  which  the  senate  was 

asked  its  opinion,  and  expressed  it,  and  saw  it 
by  the  followed  by   the  curule  magistrates.     Starting 

with  the  point  of  time  about  twenty  years  after 
the  Decemvirate,  which  I  chose  for  a  survey  of  the  Roman 
constitution,  we  find  that  within  the  next  twenty  years  the 
senate  advised  and  practically  settled  who  should  dedicate 
a  temple,  whether  for  a  given  year  the  magistrates  should 
be  consuls  or  military  tribunes,  when  there  should  be  a 
dictator  and  (seemingly)  even  what  person  should  hold  the 
dictatorial  power,  what  number  of  military  tribunes  should 
1  Livy,  1.  32.  12. 


chap,  xtti.]  SENATE  199 

go  out  as  commanders  in  a  campaign,  what  proportion  of  the 
tribes  should  be  called  on  to  furnish  soldiers,  whether  a  colony 
should  be  sent  out  to  a  piece  of  newly  conquered  territory, 
and  how  much  land  should  be  given  to  each  colonist.1 

By  giving  wise  advice  on  such  matters  as  these  the  senate 
enabled  the  Roman  state  to  adhere  to  its  admirable  foreign 
policy  of  steadily  helping  the  Latins  and  the 
Hernici :  and  in  consequence  it  became  an  influence  of 
article  of  faith  with  all  curule  magistrates  that  the  senate- 
the  senate  was  the  fountain  of  political  wisdom  and  its 
advice  must  never  be  lightly  disregarded.  During  the 
difficulties  of  the  long  siege  of  Veii,  throughout  the  thirty 
years  of  distress  that  followed  the  capture  of  Rome  and  the 
defection  of  the  Latins  and  Hernici,  during  the  anxious 
years  in  which  the  Romans  were  in  alliance  with  their  old 
supporters  but  could  not  trust  them,  and  finally  in  the  war 
with  the  Samnites  and  the  conquest  of  the  Latins,  the 
influence  of  the  senate  steadily  grew  greater,  whatever 
might  be  the  issue  from  year  to  year  of  the  conflicts 
between  the  patricians  and  the  plebeians. 

We  now  have  to  turn  to  the  war  of  the  Romans  against 
the  Latins,  the  Campanians,  and  the  Volscians,  and  to  the 
problems   which    the   Roman    magistrates    and  Djfficutt 
senate  had  to  solve  at  its  conclusion.     By  the  questions  laid 
end  of  the  year  340  B.C.  the  consul  T.  Manlius  senate,  340 
Torquatus  had   received   the  submission  of  the  B.C.-338  B.C. 

.  ,  -  (1)  Preliminary 

Campanians,  and  of  all  or  a  great  part  of  the  settlement, 
Latin  towns.     For    the    moment    nothing    was  340  B,c* 
decided  by  the  senate  except   that   some  land  should   be 
taken  from   each   of  the   Latin   towns   which   had   fought 
against   the   Romans   and   then   submitted,2  and   that   the 

1  All  these  instances  of  the  practical  influence  of  the  senate  are  mentioned 
in  Livy,  4.  29-47. 

2  Laurentum,  which  was  rather  a  country  district  than  a  town,  is  specially 
mentioned  as  having  refused  to  join  in  the  war  against  Rome. 


200  DIFFICULT  [chap.  xitt. 

Campanians  should  forfeit  the  large  and  fertile  Falernian 
field.  The  wealthy  class  in  Capua,  who  were  known  as  the 
knights,  had  not  joined  in  the  war,  and  consequently  it  was 
settled  that  they  should  be  admitted  to  full  Roman  citizen- 
ship, and  that  the  poorer  Capuans  who  had  been  enemies 
of  the  Romans  should  be  compelled  to  pay  a  special  tax 
to  provide  each  of  them  with  a  comfortable  additional 
income.1 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  number  of  Latin  towns  that 
submitted  to  the  Romans  in  340  B.C.,  their  submission  was 
it  nofc  Permanent-     In  339  B.C.  they  were  in  arms 

questions,  again,  but  owing  to  the  negligence  or  jealousy 
338  .c.  Q£  one  Q£  tke  consuls  little  was  done  towards 
reducing  them:  in  338  B.C.  they  were  completely  over- 
powered in  two  battles  by  the  consuls  L.  Furius  Camillus 
and  C.  Msenius.  Then  it  was  necessary  for  the  Romans  to 
answer  the  difficult  question  what  was  to  be  done  with  them. 
Hitherto  the  Romans  had  thought  of  only  two  methods  of 
dealing  with  conquered  towns :  they  had  either  razed  their 
walls  and  removed  a  good  part  of  their  inhabitants  to  Rome, 
or  they  had  occupied  them  with  a  garrison  of  settlers.  The 
first  plan  had  been  adopted  by  the  ancient  (patrician) 
burgesses  of  Rome  when  they  conquered  the  towns  of 
Ccenina,  Crustumeria,  Politorium  and  the  rest ; 2  the  in- 
habitants of  those  towns  had  formed  the  chief  nucleus  of 
the  plebs,  and  the  plan  of  depriving  them  of  their  own 
towns  had  led  directly  to  the  long  strife  between  the  plebeians 
and  the  patricians.  The  experiment  then  made  could  hardly 
be  repeated  on  a  far  larger  scale.  The  second  plan,  of 
occupying  the  conquered  towns  with  garrisons  of  settlers, 
was  beyond  the  power  of  the  Romans ;  they  had  not  enough 
citizens  to  occupy  them  effectively.  As  both  the  old  methods 
were   useless    or   impracticable,   some   new    plan  must    be 

1  Livy,  8.  11.  13-15.  2  See  page  169. 


chap,  xtti.]  QUESTIONS  201 

devised.  The  consul  L.  Furius  Camillus  consulted  the 
senate  on  the  matter,  and  himself  expressed  a  wish  that 
some  scheme  might  be  thought  of  which  would  enable  the 
Romans  to  keep  the  Latins  as  willing  allies.  The  senate 
resolved  to  consider  the  case  of  each  of  the  Latin  towns 
separately.  We  cannot  follow  its  deliberations,  but  if  we 
enumerate  the  principal  towns  in  Latium  with  which  it 
had  to  deal  we  can  appreciate  the  magnitude  of  the  task 
that  lay  before  it. 

Many  of  the  Latin  towns  were  older  than  Rome,  and  it  is 
quite  possible  that  some  of  them  may  have  been  joined  in 
an  alliance  or  confederation  before   Rome  was  ,_. 

The  towns 

founded.  In  the  reign  of  Tarquin  the  Proud  of  Latium, 
the  strong  towns  in  the  league  were  Tusculum,  p3  '  " 
Corbio,  Aricia,  Labici,  Lanuvium,  Lavinium,  Lauren  turn, 
Bovillae,  Nomentum,  Tibur,  Pedum  and  Prseneste;  these 
twelve  no  doubt  took  the  lead  in  concluding  the  famous 
treaty  between  the  Latins  and  the  Romans  in  the  consul- 
ship of  Sp.  Cassius  during  the  first  secession  of  the  Roman 
plebs  to  the  Mons  Sacer.  In  338  B.C.  eleven  of  the  twelve 
were  still  in  existence  and  were  members  of  the  Latin 
league;  Corbio  alone  was  missing,  having  been  destroyed 
by  the  Romans  before  the  time  of  the  Decemvirs.1  Besides 
these  ancient  towns  the  Latins  from  the  time  of  Tarquin 
onwards  had  acquired  others  by  colonisation ;  among  these 
newer  towns  the  most  important  were  Signia,  Circeii,  Norba, 

1  Livy,  3.  30,  end.  In  regard  to  Labici,  one  of  the  very  ancient  Latin 
towns,  Livy  (4.  47.  7)  tells  a  most  improbable  story,  saying  that  about 
forty  years  after  the  Decemvirate  it  was  converted  into  a  Roman  colony, 
and  therefore  implying  that  in  338  B.C.  it  was  no  longer  a  Latin  town. 
He  says  the  number  of  colonists  was  fifteen  hundred,  and  they  received  two 
jugera  apiece — that  is,  an  English  acre  and  a  fifth.  The  usual  number  of 
colonists  in  a  Roman  colony  was  three  hundred,  and  they  received  far 
more  than  two  jugera,  since  they  were  intended  to  be  a  garrison  and  a 
governing  body.  All  that  happened  at  Labici  was  a  confiscation  of  land 
which  was  distributed  to  Roman  citizens  in  garden  plots  :  Labici  continued 
after  the  confiscation  to  be  a  Latin  town. 


202  FATE  OF  THE  LATINS  [chap.  xtti. 

Ardea,  and  Setia.1  Thus  in  338  B.C.  the  Roman  senate  had 
to  decide  what  should  be  done  with  eleven  ancient  Latin 
towns  and  five  important  Latin  colonies,  besides  a  number 
of  lesser  places  too  inconsiderable  to  be  known  to  the 
annalists.  In  addition  to  all  this  they  had  to  consider  the 
case  of  Velitrse,  which  had  been  occupied  by  a  colony  of 
Roman  citizens,  but  had  joined  with  the  Latins  in  the  war 
against  Rome. 

The  Roman  senate  considered  the  merits  or  demerits  of 
the  towns  one  by  one.  Five  of  the  eleven  ancient  towns 
Dispositions  were  treated  with  lenity.  The  men  of  Tusculum 
of  the  Roman   j^  except  in  the  recent  two  years  of  war,  been 

senate  in  J-  * 

regard  to  steady  friends  of  Rome,  and  had  in  381  B.C. 
LaSum"  received  the  full  rights  of  Roman  citizenship 
338  B.C.  including  the  privilege  of  voting  in  the  assemblies. 
The  senate  in  338  B.C.  judged  that  few  of  them  had  even  in 
the  last  two  years  been  enemies  of  Rome :  they  punished  the 
offenders  and  left  the  rest  as  fully  qualified  Roman  citizens. 
Lanuvium,  Aricia,  Nomentum,  and  Pedum  were  admitted  to 
the  same  rights  as  Tusculum  had  possessed  for  forty  three 
years:  their  inhabitants  were  to  become  fully  privileged 
Roman  citizens  as  soon  as  the  holding  of  a  census  gave  an 
opportunity  of  enrolling  them  in  tribes  and  centuries.  The 
rest  of  the  Latin  towns  were  rendered  innocuous  to  the 
Romans  by  a  dissolution  of  their  ancient  league,  and  by 
the  adoption  of  precautions  which  kept  every  one  of  them 
in  complete  isolation.     All  contracts,  including  marriages, 

1  For  a  list  of  the  Latin  colonies  founded  before  338  B.C.,  see  Marquardt, 
Staataverwaltung,  1.  48,  49.  Satricnm  can  hardly  be  counted  as  a  Latin 
town  in  338  B.C.,  because  Livy  (9.  16.  2)  under  the  year  319  B.C.  speaks  of 
Satricani  qui,  cives  Romani  .  .  .  defecerant.  His  statement  (6.  16.  6)  that 
in  385  B.C.  Satricum  received  a  colony  of  two  thousand  Roman  citizens  is,  I 
admit,  incredible  :  but  it  seems  probable  that  in  some  way  before  338  B.C. 
it  had  received  Roman  citizenship,  and  in  340  B.c  Mas  not  a  Latin  town  and 
had  not  fought  against  Rome.  Antium  had  once  been  a  Latin  colony,  but 
in  338  B.C.  it  was  the  chief  town  of  the  Volscians. 


chap,  xin.]  AND  THE  CAMPANIANS  203 

between  an  inhabitant  of  one  Latin  town  and  an  inhabitant 
of  another  Latin  town  were  declared  invalid ;  and  all  agree- 
ments of  a  public  character  between  Latin  towns  were 
prohibited.1  In  regard  to  Laurentum,  the  one  Latin  com- 
munity which  had  not  fought  against  Rome,  the  arrangements 
made  in  340  B.C.  were  left  unaltered.  Laurentum  alone 
among  the  Latin  communities  lost  no  land,  and  was  per- 
mitted to  contract  a  special  treaty  of  friendship  with  the 
Romans,  which  Livy  tells  us  was  in  his  own  time  renewed 
every  year  at  the  Latin  festival.2  All  the  Latin  towns  except 
the  five  which  were  completely  incorporated  in  the  Roman 
community  were  counted  as  allies  of  Rome,  and  were 
compelled  to  furnish  the  Romans  with  contingents  of 
troops.  The  governing  class  at  Velitrse,  because  they  were 
descended  from  men  who  had  been  Roman  citizens,  were 
treated  with  exceptional  severity;  those  of  them  who 
were  senators  of  Velitrse  were  deprived  of  their  lands  and 
deported  across  the  Tiber.  The  walls  of  Velitrse  were  razed, 
and  though  new  colonists  were  sent  to  occupy  the  lands  of 
the  senators,  the  place  thenceforth  was  not  a  military  town 
but  a  large  village  of  farmers. 

The  treatment  of  the  Campanians  and  the  Volscians  is 
not  fully  described  by  Livy.  The  Falernian  field,  taken  in 
340  B.C.  from  the  Campanians,  must  have  been  „ 

1  Treatment  cf 

quickly  occupied  by  Roman  farmers,  since  in  theCampan- 
318  B.C.  it  contained  enough  citizens  to  fill  up  ians>338B.C. 
a  new  tribe  called  Falerina.3  In  the  great  and  wealthy  city 
of  Capua  all  the  citizens  except  the  knights  were  compelled 
to  receive  civitas  sine  suffragio*  or  Roman  citizenship  with- 
out the  right  of  voting,  which  had  been  imposed  probably 
about  fifteen  years  earlier  on  the  Etruscan  town  of  Csere : 
the  poor  Capuans  were  thus  placed  in  a  condition  analogous 

1  Livy,  8.  14.  2  xbid.,  8.  11.  15. 

3  Ibid.,  9.  20.  6.  4  Ibid.,  8.  14.  10. 


204  LATIN  AND  VOLSCIAN  TOWNS!   [chap.  xiit. 

to  that  of  the  Roman  plebeians  before  their  first  secession  to 
the  Mons  Sacer,  bearing  the  burdens  but  enjoying  none  of 
the  political  privileges  of  Roman  citizenship :  the  knights 
of  Capua  were  kept  in  comfort  and  in  political  predominance. 
In  the  Greek  city  of  Cumse,  in  Campanian  Suessula,  in 
Volscian  Fundi  and  Formise,  all  the  freemen  received  the 
same  civitas  sine  suffragio  as  the  mass  of  the  Capuans. 

From  the  Volscians  some  land  around  the  Pomptine 
marshes  must  have  been  seized  and  given  to  Roman 
Treatment  citizens :  for  in  318  B.C.  a  new  Roman  tribe 
of  the  was  made  and  called   Ufentina,  from   the  river 

Ufens  in  that  neighbourhood.  Some  of  the  new 
tribesmen  were  no  doubt  inhabitants  of  the  Volscian  town 
of  Privernum,  which  in  329  B.C.  was  admitted  to  full  Roman 
citizenship :  but  the  Privernatians  would  not  suffice  by 
themselves  to  make  a  whole  tribe.  Antium  the  strongest 
town  of  the  Volscians  was  compelled  to  surrender  its  galleys 
of  war  and  to  receive  a  colony  of  Roman  citizens:  its  in- 
habitants, including  the  new  colonists,  were  forbidden  to 
sail  on  the  sea  for  war  or  for  commerce.1  Those  Volscian 
towns  which  are  not  mentioned  by  name  were  no  doubt 
placed,  as  the  major  part  of  the  Latin  towns  had  been  placed, 
among  the  dependent  allies  of  Rome. 

Those  Latin  and  Volscian  towns  which  were  not  in- 
corporated in  the  Roman  state  in  338  B.C.  suffered  severely 
Condition  of  fr°m  tne  isolation  to  which  they  were  condemned, 
the  Latin  and  and  the  only  alleviation  of  their  hard  lot  con- 
towns  after  sisted  in  the  right  of  self  government  which  the 
338  B.C.  Romans  had  allowed  them  to  keep.  But,  though 
the  towns  were  grievously  humiliated,  their  inhabitants  from 
the  first  had  chances  of  becoming  prosperous,  since  they 
served  under  the  Romans  in  their  wars  and  could  gain 
plunder  or  military  rank :  and  further,  within  a  few  years, 

1  Livy,  8.  14  and  8.  12. 


chap,  xiii.]  AFTER  338  B.C.  205 

fresh  avenues  towards  good  fortune  were  opened  to  them, 
when  the  Romans,  on  making  new  conquests,  planted  on 
them  colonies  in  which  the  settlers  were  drawn  indis- 
criminately from  Rome,  from  the  Latins,  from  the  Volscians, 
and  from  the  Campanians.  Within  fifty  years  of  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Latin  league  twelve  such  colonies  were 
founded, and  towards  them  Latins,  Volscians,  and  Campanians 
were  rapidly  attracted.  The  old  towns  which  had  warred 
against  the  Romans  in  340  b.c-338  b.c.  were  thus  depleted  of 
their  inhabitants,  but  men  who  had  gone  forth  from  them 
found  new  homes  in  which  they  lived  under  the  protection 
of  the  Roman  armies  as  citizens  of  large  and  prosperous 
communities.1 

CONQUEST   OF  ITALY,   338  B.C-264  B.C. 

For  twelve  years  after  the  end  of  the  Latin  war,  from 
338  b.c.  to  326  B.C.,  the  Romans  waged  no  war  on  a  great 
scale.      During  this  interval  the  arrangements 
made  in  338  B.C.  took  their  effect  in  determining   Rome, 
boundaries  of  territories  and  the  status  of  the   &r 
men  living  within  them :  and  it  will  be  well  to  observe  at 
the  end  of  the  twelve  years'  interval  what  were  the  territories 
of  the  Romans  and  the  territories  of  their  allies. 

In  326  B.C.  the  territory  actually  inhabited  by  fully 
qualified  Roman  citizens  was  only  five  or  six  times  as  large 
as  in  the  reign  of  Tarquinius  Superbus.  The  additions 
made  to  it  since  the  time  of  Tarquin  were  these:  (1)  lands 
taken  from  conquered  towns  and  given  for  the  most  part  to 
Roman  farmers,  but  in  three  cases  to  colonies  or  garrisons 
of  Roman  citizens,  and  (2)  territories  joined  to  the  Roman 
territory  by  the  incorporation  of  their  inhabitants  in  the 

1  For  the  names  of  the  twelve  colonies  called  Latin  that  were  founded 
between  338  b.c.  and  289  B.C.,  see  Marquardt,  Staatsviv.,  1.  49,  50  in  edition 
of  1873.  These  twelve  are  nearly  half  of  all  the  Latin  colonies  founded  after 
338  B.C. 


206  STRENGTH  OF  ROME  [chap.  xiii. 

Roman  community.  Under  the  head  (1),  lands  taken  from 
conquered  towns,  we  have  to  note  the  territory  of  Veii, 
covering  perhaps  five  or  six  hundred  square  miles,  some 
small  pieces  taken  from  Latin  towns,  other  small  pieces 
taken  from  Volscian  towns,  and  lastly  the  Falernian  field 
with  an  area  of  one  or  two  hundred  square  miles.  All  of 
these  were  given  to  Roman  farmers.  The  three  positions 
assigned  to  colonies  of  Roman  citizens  were  Ostia,  Antium, 
and  Anxur  or  Terracina,  all  on  the  sea  coast.  Under  head 
(2),  territories  incorporated  together  with  their  inhabitants 
in  the  Roman  community,  with  full  rights  of  citizenship, 
were  only  the  five  Latin  towns,  Tusculum,  Aricia,  Lanuvium, 
Nomentum  and  Pedum,  and  the  Volscian  town  of  Privernum. 
Beside  the  territory  inhabited  by  full  burgesses  were  Caere, 
Capua,  Suessula,  Fundi  and  Formiae,  whose  inhabitants, 
except  the  knights  of  Capua,  were  Roman  citizens  without 
political  privileges.  All  Latin  and  Volscian  towns  except 
those  that  have  been  mentioned,  together  with  the  Hernici, 
were  called  allies,  but  were  in  truth  dependents  or  clients  of 
the  Roman  state. 

The  territories  of  the  Romans  and  their  allies  lay  in  a 
strip  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long  from  Sutrium  and 
Great  Nepete  in  Etruria  to  Cumae  near  Naples.     In  its 

strength  of  northern  half  from  Nepete  to  Sora  on  the  Liris 
body  politic,  the  strip  was  forty  miles  broad:  further  south 
326  B.C.  jt  ka(j  on}v  hajf  0f  this  width,  and  thus  its  whole 
area  was  about  four  thousand  five  hundred  square  miles, 
equal  to  three  quarters  of  Yorkshire.  With  resources 
drawn  exclusively  from  this  small  extent  of  ground,  the 
Romans  in  326  B.C.  began  the  conquest  of  Italy,  and 
sixty  two  years  later  in  264  B.C.  had  completed  it.  In 
view  of  this  astonishing  achievement  it  may  reasonably 
be  thought  that  the  Roman  community  in  326  B.C.  was  in 
military  force  and  in  conduct   of  foreign  policy  the  most 


chap,  xin.]  THE  SAMNITES  207 

vigorous  and  efficient  community  that  has  ever  subsisted  on 
so  small  an  area.  Other  instances  of  communities  that  have 
drawn  great  vigour  from  a  small  territory  are  the  French 
under  Philip  the  Second  before  he  won  conquests  from 
John  of  England,  and  the  Swiss  confederation  in  the  early 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Each  of  these  communities, 
without  counting  any  of  their  vassals  or  allies,  had  an  area 
about  half  as  large  again  as  the  territories  of  Rome  and  its 
allies  twelve  years  after  the  end  of  the  Latin  war.  The 
.Swiss  might  probably  have  contended  on  equal  terms 
against  the  Romans  in  the  field,  but  the  federal  character 
of  their  constitution  was  in  itself  a  source  of  weakness,  and 
led  in  times  of  religious  differences  to  the  dissolution  of 
their  body  politic.  The  French  under  Philip  the  Second 
were  much  more  like  the  Romans  in  the  early  part  of  their 
career  because  their  territory  had  been  accumulated  by 
conquests  of  fortresses  carried  out  from  Paris  as  a  centre : 
but  the  French  had  had  a  far  less  arduous  and  prolonged 
task  of  conquest  than  the  Romans,  and  accordingly  they 
had  not  so  large  a  force  of  trained  soldiers  nor  so  many 
skilful  generals,  and  above  all,  they  had  no  such  admirably 
efficient  organ  for  managing  their  foreign  policy  as  the 
Romans  possessed  in  their  senate. 

When  the  Romans  in  326  B.C.  began  advancing  their 
armies  beyond  Campania,  their  first  opponents  were  the 
Samnites,  who  deserve  a  short  notice,  because 
they  were  the  strongest  of  the  tribal  peoples  in 
ancient  Italy.  They  were  one  of  those  many  offshoots  from 
the  Sabines  which  received  from  Niebuhr,  and  have  since 
retained,  the  ethnographic  name  of  Sabellian.  The  Sabines 
in  an  unknown  age  sent  out  bands  of  adventurers  from  their 
homes  close  to  the  highest  mountains  in  the  Italian 
peninsula,  now  known  as  il  Gran  Sasso  d'ltalia  and  Monti 
della   Sibilla,   to   seek   their   fortunes   abroad.     The   lesser 


208  EXPANSION  OF  [chap.  xiii. 

peoples  founded  by  the  migrant  Sabines  included  the 
Frentani,  the  Peligni,  the  Marrucini,  and  probably  the 
Vestini,  all  settled  on  lands  which  drain  into  the  Adriatic 
Sea:  their  greatest  conquest  was  the  valley  of  the  river 
Volturnus,  which  runs  the  other  way  into  the  western  sea, 
passing  on  its  course  close  to  Capua. 

When  the  Sabine  adventurers  came  into  the  upper  basin 
of  the  Volturnus  they  found  the  country  already  occupied 
Their  by  an  Oscan  people  : x  from  the  Oscans  they  con- 

conquests,  quered  a  territory  nearly  as  large  as  that  occupied 
in  326  B.C.  by  the  Romans  and  their  allies :  but  they  adopted 
the  language  of  the  vanquished  Oscans.2  From  this  fact  we 
may  gather  that  the  Sabine  conquerors  were  few  and  the 
conquered  Oscans  were  many,  and  that  the  conquest  of  the 
Oscan  territory  was  affected  with  ease  and  rapidity :  for,  if 
it  had  been  a  slow  business,  the  Sabines  would  have  needed 
to  establish  themselves  in  great  force  in  a  part  of  the 
country,  and  get  great  reinforcements  from  their  Sabine 
home  in  order  to  conquer  the  rest :  in  that  case  they  would 
probably  have  kept  the  Sabine  language.  The  Sabines  in 
the  valley  of  the  Volturnus  probably  called  themselves 
Safini :  the  Greeks  called  them  Saunitte,  the  Romans  called 
them  Samnites.  After  the  arrival  of  the  Samnites  in  the 
Volturnus  valley  they  were  a  small  dominant  race  ruling 
the  many  subject  Oscans,  as  the  Normans  in  our  own 
island  ruled  the  subject  English:  but  before  440  B.C.  it 
seems  certain  that  the  Samnites  and  the  Oscans  had 
amalgamated  into  one  strong  people  which  bore  the  name 
of  Samnites:  for  about  that  time  we  learn  that  the 
Samnites  began  sending  out  offshoots  further  afield. 
Between  440  B.C.  and  380  B.C.  bands  of  Samnites  conquered 
Campania  from  the  Etruscans  and  the  Greeks,  and  organised 
a  number  of  the  small  tribes  in  the  southern  peninsula  of 

1  See  p.  163.  ■  Livy,  10.  20.  8. 


chap,  xiii.]  THE  SABINES  209 

Italy  into  a  large  people  known  as  Lucanians :  the  Lucanians 
in  turn  sent  out  an  offshoot  which  gained  some  kind  of 
dominance  over  the  Bruttians  further  south.  But  the 
conquests  made  by  the  Samnites  outside  the  land  which 
had  been  Oscan  added  nothing  to  their  power :  the 
Campanians,  the  Lucanians,  and  the  Bruttians  were  all 
separate  peoples  from  the  Samnites  proper,  and  the 
Campanians  between  340  B.C.  and  338  B.C.  were  converted 
into  a  dependency  of  the  Romans.1 

The  Samnites  within  the  land  they  had  conquered  from 
the  Oscans   bore  in  different   districts   the  names   Pentri, 
Caraceni,  Hirpini,  and  Caudini.      These  names 
denote  the  cantons  into  which  they  were  divided,   condition 
The  cantons   of  the   Pentri,  the  Caraceni,  and   °fthe 

Samnites. 

the  Hirpini  were  large  and  peopled  by  hardy 
mountaineers  and  herdsmen :  they  had  but  few  towns  as 
Bovianum,  iEsernia,  and  Malibentum  (afterwards  Beneven- 
tum),  and  even  these  towns  probably  served  rather  as 
markets  and  refuges  in  case  of  need  than  as  places  of  con- 
tinuous residence,  since  during  the  greater  part  of  the  year 
the  Samnites  had  to  be  out  on  the  open  mountain  sides  in 
order  to  get  pasture.  The  Caudini  were  a  very  small 
canton,  and  as  they  took  their  name  from  the  town  of 
Caudium  and  lived  near  to  the  wealthy  city  of  Capua,  they 
may  have  had  a  larger  proportion  of  townsfolk  than  the 
other  cantons. 

About  the  government  of  the  Samnites  we  know  nothing 
except   that  they  had  no   kings:    we  do  not  even  know 
whether  their   cantons   were  joined   only  in   a  -^^ 
permanent     alliance     like     the     Swiss     before   qualities. 
1481   a.d.,  or  under  a  federal  government  like  the  Swiss 

1  Evidence  about  the  conquests  of  the  Samnites  is  given  in  the  articles 
'Samnium,'  •  Lucani,'  '  Bruttii,'  contributed  to  Smith's  Diet.  Qeogr.  by  Sir 
Edward  Bun  bury. 

O 


210  FINAL  CONCESSIONS  [chap.  xiti. 

after  that  date.  On  the  whole  the  Sainnites  bore  more 
resemblance  to  the  Swiss  than  to  any  other  people :  but  it 
was  characteristic  of  a  people  which  had  made  its  conquests 
with  ease  that  they  were  unskilful  in  managing  foreign 
policy.  They  had  not  while  they  were  expanding  needed 
alliances,  and  in  consequence  they  did  not  know  how  to 
make  them.  During  their  contest  with  the  Romans  they 
failed  to  tnake  allies  of  either  their  kinsmen  the  Lucanians 
or  the  Greek  Tarentines,  though  either  alliance  could  have 
been  gained  with  a  little  skill:  and  after  they  had  compelled 
two  consular  armies  of  Romans  to  capitulate  in  the  Caudine 
Forks  they  gathered  no  fruits  from  their  victory.  The 
Swiss,  who  had  to  endure  most  arduous  exertions  in 
asserting  their  independence,  never  failed  to  reap  all 
the  advantages  that  could  be  got  from  a  successful  battle, 
and  in  the  fifteenth  century  showed  excellent  judgment 
in  choosing  their  allies.  In  spite,  however,  of  all  defects  in 
their  organisation  and  policy  the  Samnites  were  by  far  the 
strongest  of  the  Italian  adversaries  of  the  Romans:  their 
war  against  the  Romans  began  in  326  B.C.,  and  it  was  not  till 
thirty  six  years  later,  in  290  B.C.,  that  it  ended  in  their 
defeat. 

The  second  strong  adversary  of  the  Romans  was  Pyrrhus, 
King  of  Epeirus.  In  his  own  country  he  was  an  excellent 
ruler  of  a  vigorous  tribal  people :  during  his 
campaigns  in  Italy,  although  he  came  in  the 
first  instance  as  the  champion  of  the  Tarentines,  he  was  not 
king  of  a  people  but  only  commander  of  an  army,  and  as 
such  he  need  not  detain  us  longer.  He  arrived  in  Italy  in 
280  B.C.,  defeated  the  Romans  at  Heraclea  and  Asculum, 
but,  finding  that  his  victories  availed  him  nothing,  went 
away  from  Italy  to  Sicily,  where  he  gained  some  short  lived 
successes.  In  276  b.c.  he  came  back  to  Italy  and  lost  a 
battle  at  Beneventuni ;   in  the  next  year  he  went  back  to 


chap,  xiii.]  TO  THE  PLEBEIANS  211 

Epeirus,  leaving  the  Romans  practically  masters  of  Italy. 
By  the  year  264  B.C.  they  had  asserted  their  supremacy  over 
all  the  peninsula  as  far  north  as  the  river  Arno  on  the  west 
coast,  and  the  river  iEsis  near  Ancona  on  the  Adriatic 
shore. 

When  the  patricians  in  342  B.C.,  just  before  the  great  Latin 
war,  ceased  to  evade  the  law  which  prescribed  that  one  of 
the  consuls  should  be  a  plebeian,  they  put  an   Final  con- 
end  to  the  sharpness  of  the  strife  between  the   cessions  to 
orders.    From  that  time  the  tribunes  made  no   during  the 
attacks  on  the  whole  patrician  order :  their  only   conquest  of 
onslaught   against    any  patrician  was   directed   326  b.c- 
against  Appius  Claudius,  who,  after  being  elected  "r*  BC- 
censor  in  312  B.C.,  refused  to  obey  the  law  which  ordained 
that  he  should  lay  down  his  office  at  the  end  of  eighteen 
months,  and  thereby  probably  offended  a  great  part  of  the 
patricians  no  less  than  he  offended  the  plebeians.     During 
the  wars  against   the   Samnites   and   against  Pyrrhus  the 
patricians  were  intent  on  making  conquests,  for  which  they 
needed  the  zealous  support  of  the  plebeians :  consequently 
they  made  no  efforts  to  keep  those  minor  exclusive  privileges 
which  still  remained  to  them,  but  gave  way  to  all  demands 
made  by  the  plebeians.     Before  the  year  300  B.C.  plebeians 
had  held  the  offices  of  dictator  and  censor,  besides  having  a 
legal  title  to  one  of  the  two  consulships  in  every  year.    Thus 
all  the  great  magistracies  were  as  open  to  them  as  to  the 
patricians.     Finally  in  300  B.C.  by  the  Ogulnian  law  they 
gained  access  also  to  the  religious  dignities  of  the  augurship 
and  the  pontificate.1     A  few  years  later  the  poor  plebeians, 
being  oppressed  with  debts,  made  their  grievances  known 
in    a    serious    insurrection     and    in    a    secession    to    the 
Janiculum,  of  which  we  know  very  little  because  we  possess 
nothing  of  the  eleventh  book  of  Livy  except  an  ancient 

1  Livy,  10.  6-8,  especially  10.  8.  8  and  10.  9.  2. 


212  LATIN  [chap.  xiii. 

epitome.1  A  plebeian  dictator  Hortensius  put  an  end  to 
the  secession  by  passing  in  the  assembly  of  the  centuries 
the  famous  Lex  Hortensia  by  which  it  was  ordained  that 
all  plebiscite,,  or  resolutions  accepted  in  the  concilium 
plebis,  should  have  the  force  of  law  and  be  binding  on 
plebeians  and  patricians  alike. 

After  the  passing  of  the  Lex  Hortensia  the  patricians  had 
no  exclusive  political  privileges,  and  the  plebeians  had  two. 
None  but  a  plebeian  could  be  a  tribune  or  an  sedile,  and  the 
plebeians  had  power  to  make  laws  binding  on  the  whole 
community.  The  privileged  position,  however,  of  the 
plebeians  produced  no  bad  results,  because,  in  thirty  one 
out  of  the  thirty  five  tribes,  all  the  voters  were  landowners, 
and  because,  as  we  shall  see,  the  tribunes  soon  came  under 
the  moderating  influence  of  the  senate.2 

During  the  course  of  the  conquest  of  Italy  the  Roman 
magistrates  with  the  advice  of  the  senate  took  wise  measures 
„     .  .  for   securing  their  acquisitions.     Thev  did   not 

Provisions  ,.  * 

for  securing     extend   the   Roman   territory  by  incorporating 
j°°trolof        conquered  peoples  with  the  Romans  except  in 
326  B.C.-        one  instance,  in   268   B.C.,  when   they  imposed 
4  Roman  citizenship  on  the  Sabines.8    When  the 

Sabine  country  had  been  annexed  the  continuous  territory 
of  the  Romans  had  its  corners  at  Sutrium  in  Etruria,  at 
Nursia  in  the  north  of  the  land  of  the  Sabines,  and  at  Cumai 
in  Campania,  and  its  area  was  only  six  thousand  square 
miles,  one  third  more  than  the  territory  of  the  Romans  and 
their  allies  a  dozen  years  after  the  Latin  war.  Within  these 
narrow  limits  dwelt  all  the  Romans  who  at  all  regularly 
took  part  as  voters  in  the  assemblies  of  the  republic,  and 

1  Livy,  Epitome  of  Book  11,  'plebs  propter  aesalienum  post  graves  etlongas 
seditiones  ad  ultimuni  secessit  in  Janiculum  :  unde  a  Q.  Hortensio  deducta 
est.'  Justinian,  Digest.,  I.  2.  2.  8,  where  a  long  extract  from  Pomponius  is 
given. 

2  See  below,  pp.  225,  229.  3  Velleius  PaterculuB,  1.  14.  6. 


chap,  xiii.]  COLONIES  213 

who  may  therefore  be  called  the  active  citizens  of  the 
community.  There  were,  however,  Roman  citizens  settled 
one  by  one  or  in  small  groups  as  farmers  almost  all  over 
Italy:  and  these  farmers,  being  liable  to  service  in  the 
legions,  were  in  all  senses  that  were  not  political  effective 
members  of  the  Roman  commonwealth. 

The  small  Roman  state  whose  limits  have  just  been 
denned  had  acquired  a  suzerainty  over  Italy  and  desired 
to  keep  it.  In  order  that  its  desire  might  be  Latin 
fulfilled  it  was  necessary  that  the  Roman  armies  colonies, 
should  be  able  to  move  freely  throughout  the  peninsula: 
and  this  they  could  not  do  unless  they  had  points  of 
support  to  give  them  supplies  and,  in  case  of  need,  defences. 
Such  points  of  support  the  Romans  provided  for  them  by 
founding  a  number  of  garrison  towns  or  colonies  at  strategi- 
cally important  inland  positions.  There  were  not  enough 
Roman  citizens  to  furnish  settlers  to  occupy  these  towns, 
and  therefore  the  colonists  were  taken  indiscriminately 
from  the  Romans,  the  Latins,  the  Volscians,  the  Cam- 
panians,  and  the  Hernicans.  By  drawing  on  so  many 
peoples  the  Romans  were  enabled  to  give  each  of  the  new 
fortresses  a  sufficient  number  of  inhabitants :  for  example, 
2500  colonists  were  planted  at  Cales,  the  same  number  at 
Luceria,  4000  at  Sora,  and  6000  at  Alba  near  the  Lake 
Fucinus  in  the  land  of  the  iEqui :  in  each  case  wives  and 
children  would  at  the  first  founding  of  the  town  be  as  many 
as  the  colonists  proper,  and  within  a  generation  they  would 
be  three  times  as  many. 

The  inland  colonies  thus  established  were  set  down  in  the 
midst  of  Italian  tribes  which  resented  their  coming  to  rob 
them  of  their  land:  they  were  accordingly  compelled  to 
rely  for  protection  on  the  Roman  armies,  and  therefore 
to  be  faithful  to  Rome.  Their  foundation  served  the 
threefold  purpose  of  removing  the  greater  part  of  the  old 


214  THE  ITALIANS  [chap.  xiii. 

Latins  and   Volscians  from  near   Rome,  where  they  were 
not    wanted,    of   making   the  colonists   contented,   and   of 
.  giymg  bases  of  operation  to  the  Roman  armies, 

dependence  The  colonies  governed  themselves,  had  the  right 
on  ome.  Q£  ^fcrikfog  their  own  coinage,  and  were  called 
allies,  not  subjects,  of  the  Romans:  and,  as  they  were 
largely  composed  of  Latins  and  stood  in  the  same  relation 
to  Rome  as  those  Latin  towns  which  had  not  been  in- 
corporated in  the  Roman  body  politic,  they  acquired 
either  at  first  or  within  one  or  two  generations  the  ap- 
pellations, peoples  of  the  Latin  name,  or  allies  belonging 
to  the  Latin  name.1  The  number  of  colonies  of  the 
Latin  name  founded  between  the  end  of  the  Latin  war 
and  264  B.C.  was  eighteen :  the  most  important  was 
Venusia,  at  the  meeting  point  of  Samnium,  Apulia  and 
Lucania. 

In  regard  to  the  peoples  of  Italy  generally,  as  the 
Samnites,  the  Etruscans,  and  the  Umbrians,  we  do  not 
know  what  status  was  allotted  to  them  immedi- 
ately after  they  were  conquered :  but  in  dealing 
with  the  Hernici  the  Romans  took  care  to  break  them  up 
into  small  units  before  they  dictated  any  terms  to  them, 
and  then  they  dictated  their  terms  to  each  small  unit 
separately.2  From  later  records  we  can  see  that  a  similar 
course  was  adopted  then  or  afterwards  in  dealing  with  the 
Samnites,  the  Etruscans,  and  the  Umbrians.3  The  terms 
imposed  on  an  Italian  community  always  contained  a  stipu- 
lation that  it  must  furnish  the  Romans  with  soldiers  when 
required. 

The  precautions  just  described  almost  sufficed  to  secure 
for  the  Romans  the  control  of  Italy :  but  for  some  reasons, 
probably  local,    which   are  not    explained,   they  found   it 

1  E.g.  in  Livy,  23.  12.  16.  2  Livy,  9.  43. 

Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  46,  47,  edition  of  1873. 


chap,  xiil]  MARITIME  COLONIES  215 

desirable  in  the  country  east  of  Umbria,  whence  they  had 
expelled  the  Senonian  Gauls,  and  in  Picenum,  a  little  further 
south  east,  to  establish  two  colonies  on  the  coast  Maritime 
at  Sena  Gallica  and  at  Castrum  Novum : *  during  colomes- 
the  first  Punic  war,  which  was  waged  mainly  on  the 
sea,  they  planted  three  more  colonies  on  the  coast,  one  in 
Umbria,  and  two  in  Etruria.  In  founding  these  colonies, 
which  were  called  maritime,  they  followed  a  precedent 
which  had  been  set  by  their  ancestors  when  they  turned 
some  of  the  towns  on  the  Latin  coast  into  Roman  stations, 
by  choosing  the  colonists  exclusively  from  Roman  citizens : 
in  the  time  of  the  first  Punic  war  it  would  have  been 
imprudent  to  place  a  colony  of  any  but  Romans  on  the 
coast  where  it  might  receive  visits  from  foreign  fleets  or 
foreign  ambassadors,  and  be  exposed  to  temptations  so 
strong  as  might  lead  it  to  break  faith  with  Rome.  The 
number  of  Roman  citizens  sent  to  act  as  a  garrison  of  a 
town  at  a  distance  from  Rome  was  usually  three  hundred  : 
that  was  the  number  in  each  of  three  colonies  of  Roman 
citizens  sent  out  in  194  B.C.,  seventy  years  after  the  period 
of  which  I  am  speaking:2  and  it  is  certain  that  in 
the  earlier  time  of  the  conquest  of  Italy  and  the  first 
Punic  war  the  number  sent  to  the  maritime  colonies 
was  not  more  than  three  hundred,  and  was  only  just 
enough  to  provide  the  towns  to  which  they  were  sent 
with  a  garrison  and  a  governing  body.  We  are  not 
definitely  informed  whether  the  settlers  in  a  maritime 
colony  retained  their  full  rights  as  Roman  citizens,  though 
it  seems  likely  that  they  may  have  kept  them:  but  in 
any  case  they  were  too  far  away  from  Rome  to  exercise 
them  habitually,  and  we  have  perfectly  clear  evidence 
that    they    were    free    from    all    military    service   except 

1  Polybius,  2.  19.  12,  and  Livy,  ep.  11. 

2  Livy,  34.  4j. 


216  ITALY  UNDER  [chap.  xiii. 

their  duty  of  holding  the  town  in  which  they  had  been 
settled.1 

When   Italy  had  been   conquered    by   the   Romans  its 
inhabitants    were    politically    arranged    in    three    classes, 
Romans,  Latins,  and  Italians.     The  Romans  were 
Roman  planted  thickly  over  an  area  as  large  as  York- 

suzerainty,      shire,  with  Rome  as  its  centre,  and  were  scattered 

264  B.C.  .  -Tii 

thinly  about  the  whole  peninsula.  The  only 
Romans  who  could  habitually  take  part  in  Roman  political 
life  were  those  who  lived  within  two  days'  journey,  say  forty 
or  fifty  miles,  of  the  capital  city.  Towards  the  sea  and  in 
Etruria  the  Roman  territory  extended  very  much  less  than 
fifty  miles  from  the  city :  and  from  consideration  of  a  map 
we  may  conclude  that  the  active  Roman  citizens  lived  on 
not  much  more  than  half  of  a  circle  with  a  radius  of  forty 
or  fifty  miles — that  is  to  say,  on  an  area  of  only  about  four 
thousand  square  miles.  The  inhabitants  of  this  small 
extent  of  land  were,  in  so  far  as  the  work  of  governing 
was  concerned,  the  suzerain  community  of  Italy :  the 
Romans  further  from  Rome  exercised  their  citizenship 
merely  by  serving  in  the  army.  Of  the  Latins  by  far  the 
strongest  bodies  were  eighteen  colonies  far  away  from 
Latium :  the  colonists  were  descended  from  men  who  had 
been  for  a  century,  and  then  again  for  half  a  century, 
brothers  in  arms  of  the  Romans,  and  they  needed  the  help 
of  the  Roman  armies  to  protect  them  from  Italians  whose 
lands  had  been  given  to  them  by  the  Romans.  In  conse- 
quence of  these  facts  they  were  zealous  and  hearty  in  giving 
their  services  to  their  Roman  suzerains,  and  in  a  later 
period  when  their  allegiance  to  Rome  was  most  severely 
tried  it  could  not  be  shaken.  The  Italian  communities 
gained  little  from  their  vassalage  to  Rome  except  that  they 

1  Livy,   27.    3S.      On   the  maritime  colonies   generally,  see   Marquardt, 
Staatsuw.,  1.  35-39. 


chap,  xiil]  ROMAN  SUZERAINTY  217 

were  prevented  from  fighting  with  one  another:  but  the 
services  required  of  them  consisted  in  the  furnishing  of 
troops  and  not  in  the  payment  of  money,  and  as  it  was 
necessary  for  the  Romans  to  treat  them  with  conciliation 
because  they  wished  that  they  should  furnish  their  con- 
tingents willingly,  and  those  contingents  should  fight 
zealously,  their  condition  was  far  better  than  if  they  had 
been  merely  tributary  communities,  and  was  contrasted 
most  favourably  with  the  condition  of  Greek  maritime  cities 
under  the  suzerainty  of  Athens  or  Sparta. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

SUrEEMACY  OF   THE  ROMANS   IN   ITALY,   264   B.C.-201    B.C. 

In  264  B.C.,  soon  after  the  Romans  had  acquired  the  power 
to  control  the  doings  of  all  the  communities  in  Italy,  they 
thought  it  advisable  to  intervene  in  a  quarrel  between  two 
bodies  politic  in  Sicily,  just  outside  their  own  peninsula. 
Their  interference  in  Sicilian  affairs  brought  them  into 
active  rivalry  with  the  Carthaginians,  who,  though  unlike 
them  in  character  and  pursuits,  were  approximately  their 
equals  in  effective  strength.  From  264  to  241  the  rival 
peoples  of  Rome  and  Carthage  waged  open  war  with 
varying  fortunes  for  the  possession  of  Sicily:  from  241  to 
218  they  were  at  peace  but  unfriendly :  from  218  to  201  the 
Roman  state  had  to  contend  for  its  existence  against 
Carthaginian  armies  commanded  by  the  splendid  genius 
of  Hannibal.  As  Rome  and  Carthage  were  evenly  matched 
in  strength,  the  Romans  throughout  the  sixty  four  years  of 
the  contest  from  264  to  201  never  extended  their  supremacy 
so  as  to  include  more  than  Italy  and  its  adjacent  islands  of 
Sicily,  Sardinia,  and  Corsica;  on  the  other  hand,  at  all 
times  except  from  217  to  203  the  Romans  kept  control  ot 
all  Italy,  and  even  in  their  years  of  adversity  from  217  to 
203  they  retained  the  willing  allegiance  of  the  Latins,  who 
were  by  far  the  most  important  among  those  inhabitants  of 
Italy  who  were  not  Roman  citizens.  Hence  it  appears  that 
the  period  from  264  to  201  can  be  designated  without 
serious  inaccuracy  as  the  period  of  the  supremacy  of  the 

218 


chap,  xiv.]  SICILY  219 

Romans  in  Italy.  In  sketching  the  character  and  circum- 
stances of  the  Roman  commonwealth  in  this  period  I  shall 
depict  first  the  causes  and  results  of  its  wars  against 
Carthage,  then  its  constitution,  next  the  social  classes  into 
which  the  Roman  citizens  were  divided,  and,  lastly,  the 
administration  of  justice  in  suits  that  arose  between  members 
of  different  communities  in  Italy. 

Sicily,  where  the  Romans  made  their  first  intervention 
outside  Italy,  was  in  264,  and  had  been  for  about  twenty 
five  years,  divided  into  four  parts.  The  west  of  ^  Sicily, 
the  island  belonged  to  the  Carthaginians:  the  ^b.c. 
eastern  coast  except  its  northern  extremity  was  Greek,  and 
from  270  onwards  was  subject  to  Syracuse :  the  north 
eastern  corner  of  the  island  was  ruled  since  289  B.C.  by  a 
lawless  band  of  adventurers,  called  Mamertines,  who  were 
originally  recruited  in  Campania  by  Agathokles,  tyrant  of 
Syracuse,  but  on  his  death  in  289  B.C.  had  perfidiously 
seized  the  seaport  town  of  Messana :  the  middle  of  the 
island  and  some  of  the  northern  coast  was  inhabited  by 
communities  of  Sikels,  which  from  270  were  so  far  subject 
to  the  Syracusans  that  they  paid  them  a  tenth  of  their 
produce.1  The  strongest  power  in  the  island  was  Carthage ; 
the  second  Syracuse ;  the  third  the  Mamertines ;  the  Sikel 
communities  cannot  be  counted  as  a  separate  power  since 
they  were  dependent  on  Syracuse.2 

It  was  probably  in  the  year  275  that  Hieron  the  Second 
was  chosen  by  the  Syracusans  to  be  their  general  and  chief 
statesman.  His  most  troublesome  neighbours  were  the 
Mamertines  at  Messana,  and  another  similar  body  of  Cam- 
panian  adventurers  at  Rhegium,  on  the  coast  of  Italy 
where  it  approaches  very  near  to  Sicily.     The  Campanians 

1  Cicero,  in  Verrem,  Act.  2.  3.  6, 12. 13.    Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  93,  n.  8. 

2  There  is  a  good  map  of  Sicily  in  264  b.c.  in  Smith,  Alias  of  Class. 
Geogr.,  Plate  15. 


220  FIRST  [chap.  xiv. 

of  Rhegium  had  been  originally  formed  into  a  legion  by 
the  Romans,  and  had  been  stationed  by  them  in  281  as  a 
Hieronof  garrison  of  Rhegium  under  their  Campanian 
Syracuse  commander  Decius  Jubellius.  While  the  Romans 
Romans!  were  busy  in  thinking  of  their  means  of  resisting 
and  expects     Pyrrhus  (who  came  to  Italy  in  280),  the  garrison 

their  friend-         /  _.       .v  .  „     ,     *       ..      /'  °    „ 

ship  in  of  Rhegium  threw  on  their  allegiance  to  Rome 

return.  an(}    seized    Rhegium    for    themselves.     When 

Pyrrhus  was  gone  from  Sicily  and  Italy,  the  Romans 
and  Hieron  had  a  common  interest  in  expelling  the 
Jubellians  from  Rhegium :  the  Romans  besieged  the  town, 
and  Hieron  helped  them.1  The  Jubellians  were  for  the 
most  part  killed  fighting:  those  who  were  captured  were 
publicly  beaten  to  death  in  the  forum  at  Rome.  Then  it 
was  the  turn  of  Hieron  to  attack  the  Mamertines:  in  270 
he  defeated  them  in  battle  and  shut  them  up  in  Messana : 
thereupon  he  was  saluted  as  king  of  all  the  Greeks  in  Sicily. 
After  besieging  Messana  for  six  years  he  at  length  reduced 
its  inhabitants  to  extreme  distress,  and,  if  no  foreign  power 
intervened,  he  was  sure  of  taking  the  city :  but  thereupon 
the  Mamertines  offered  the  Romans  to  become  their  de- 
pendents in  return  for  protection  against  Hieron. 

The  Roman  senate  reflected  that,  if  the  Romans  refused 
protection,  the  Carthaginians  would  give  it,  and  thereby 
Th  getting  possession  of  Messana,  only  six  miles 

offer  distant  from  the  shores  of  Italy,  might  dominate 

to  theCtl°n  a^  Sicily  and  become  dangerous  to  themselves, 
enemies  of  On  the  other  hand,  they  were  ashamed  to  aid 
the  murderous  and  perfidious  Mamertines  against 
their  own  ally  Hieron  who  had  recently  helped  them  to 
destroy  the  Jubellians.  Being  in  doubt  they  referred  the 
matter  to  the  centuriate  assembly,  which  was  by  custom  the 
proper  body  to  decide  any  question  of  peace  and  war  on 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  article  'Hieron  II.,'  from  Zonarafc,  8.  6. 


chap,  xiv.]  PUNIC  WAR  221 

which  the  senate  was  in  doubt:  the  centuries  voted  that 
help  should  be  given  to  the  Mamertines.1 

Not  long  afterwards  the  Mamertines  declined  protection 
from  the  Romans,  and  took  it  from  the  Carthaginians 
instead :    the    Romans    decided   to   oppose   the   „,     j.    . 

11  First  Punic 

Carthaginians  by  force.  Thus  began  the  first  war  and  its 
Punic  war  which  did  not  end  till  241,  twenty  results' 
four  years  later.  Hieron  in  the  second  year  of  the  war  saw 
that  it  was  wise  to  make  friends  of  the  Romans  while  they 
valued  his  friendship :  and  from  that  time  the  combatants 
were  on  the  one  side  the  Carthaginians,  on  the  other  the 
Romans  and  Hieron.  At  the  close  of  the  war  the  Romans, 
being  victorious,  took  into  their  own  possession  that  part 
of  Sicily  which  had  been  subject  to  Carthage,  and  thus 
acquired  their  first  dependency  outside  of  Italy.  The 
soldiers  whom  the  Carthaginians  had  employed  during 
their  twenty  four  years  of  war  against  the  Romans  were 
nearly  all  foreign  mercenaries  drawn  from  many  lands. 
Those  of  them  who  were  in  service  when  the  war  ended, 
being  defrauded  by  the  Carthaginians  of  their  wages,  tried 
on  returning  to  Africa  to  extort  what  was  due  to  them  and 
much  more  besides  by  mutiny.  During  the  hideous  war 
which  ensued  between  the  Carthaginians  and  the  revolted 
mercenary  troops,  the  Romans  took  the  opportunity  of 
robbing  the  Carthaginians  of  the  islands  of  Sardinia  and 
Corsica :  in  227  they  constituted  that  western  part  of  Sicily 
which  they  had  conquered  from  the  Carthaginians  as  the 
province  of  Sicily,  and  at  the  same  time  established  a 
province  of  Sardinia  which  included  both  Sardinia  and 
Corsica.  Appian,  writing  somewhere  about  120-140  a.d., 
tells  us  that  in  the  part  of  Sicily  which  they  had  acquired 
they  levied  direct  tribute  from  the  inhabitants,  and  required 
the  cities  to  make  a  payment  under  the  head  of  customs  on 

1  Polybiue,  1.  10  and  11. 


222  ITALY  [chap.  xiv. 

maritime  trade.1  The  practice  of  exacting  tribute  from 
dependencies  outside  of  Italy,  which  was  now  first  initiated, 
afterwards  proved  deadly  to  the  welfare  of  the  Romans: 
but  so  long  as  Sicily  and  Sardinia  were  the  only  Roman 
provinces  beyond  the  seas  the  receipts  from  them  were 
not  large  enough  to  change  the  character  of  the  Roman 
commonwealth  or  its  government. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  Punic  war  Hamilcar,  surnamed 
Barca,  the  Thunderbolt,  an  excellent  Carthaginian  general 
and  statesman,  devoted  himself  and  his  young 
son  Hannibal  to  the  task  of  avenging  the  wrongs 
done  to  his  country  by  the  Romans,  and  for  that  purpose 
established  himself  in  power  in  the  south  of  Spain.  He 
did  not  live  to  carry  out  the  work  that  he  had  set  himself 
to  do :  but  after  his  death  his  son-in-law  Hasdrubal  and 
his  son  Hannibal  continued  what  he  had  begun,  and  in  218 
Hannibal  invaded  Italy.2 

The  Romans  in  218  were  far  stronger  than  they  had  been 
immediately  after  they  completed  the  conquest  of  Italy. 
Condition  of  ^ne  territor7  thickly  peopled  with  Roman 
Italy,  citizens  now  included  not  only  the  triangle  with 

218  B.C.  . 

its  corners  in  southern  Etruria,  in  the  north  of 
the  Sabine  land  and  in  Campania,  which  had  all  been 
Roman  for  half  a  century,3  and  which  was  most  properly 
Ramanus  ager,  but  also  a  large  block  in  Picenum  on  the 
Adriatic  Sea  which  had  in  232  been  distributed  to  Roman 
settlers:  their  more  scattered  settlements  were  five  mari- 
time colonies  at  a  distance  from  Rome,4  and  many  groups 
of  Roman  farmers  in  all  parts  of  Italy  who  had  chanced  to 
acquire  plots  of  ground.  The  Roman  community  that  took 
part  in  government  was  necessarily  limited  to  those  citizens 

1  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  92,  n.  1,  from  Appian,  Sic,  2. 

2  Polybius,  2.  21.  s  See  p.  212. 

*  Sena    Gallica,    Castrum   Novum    in    Picenum,    Aesium,    Alsium,    and 
Fregenae. — Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  38, 


chap,  xiv.]  IN  218  B.C.  223 

who  lived  in  Rome  or  immediately  around  it :  for  military 
purposes  the  Roman  community  included  all  Romans  fit 
for  service,  wherever  they  might  have  their  domicile. 
Those  Romans  who  lived  far  from  the  city  and  only  gave 
their  services  in  war  did  not  resent  their  practical  exclusion 
from  a  share  in  the  work  of  government,  because  the 
Romans  who  lived  in  and  around  Rome  were  for  the  most 
part  thrifty  and  valiant  landowners  like  themselves,  and 
gave  such  votes  as  they  approved.  All  the  inhabitants  of 
Italy  other  than  the  Roman  citizens  were  either  Latins  or 
Italians.  The  Latin  communities  were  thirty  flourishing 
colonies  established  in  important  strategic  positions  in  the 
inland  parts  of  Italy,1  and  a  few  decadent  towns  in  Latium  : 
the  colonies  had  been  treated  with  tender  care  by  the 
Romans,  and  well  knew  that  they  could  not  retain  their 
present  wellbeing  except  under  Roman  protection.2  The 
Italians  furnished  their  contingents  of  troops  under  com- 
pulsion, and  without  any  feelings  of  affection  for  the  Romans 
who  exacted  them. 

The  war  against  Hannibal  was  waged  in  Italy,  Spain,  and 
Sicily.     In  Italy  as  soon  as  Hannibal  advanced  from  north 
to  south  through  the  country  the  Italian  com-   Th 
munities  went  over  to  him  except  in  a  few  regions   against 
where  the  Roman  armies  were  stronger  than  their   It!|jLm  a  in 
opponents.     The  war  was  decided  in  favour  of  218  b.c- 

201  B  C 

the  Romans  mainly  by  the  resolute  fidelity  of 
the  Latin  colonies  to  their  cause.  After  the  terrible  defeat 
of  the  Roman  armies  at  Cannae  not  one  of  the  thirty  colonies 
could  be  induced  to  join  Hannibal,  or  even  to  cease  fighting 
for  Rome.3  In  the  whole  course  of  the  exhausting  war 
against  the  invader  only  twelve  of  the  weaker  colonies  in 
209  declared  themselves  unable  to  furnish  more  troops ;  the 

1  Livy,  27.  9  gives  a  list  of  the  Latin  colonies. 

2  See  p.  213.  s  Livy,  23.  12. 


224  ROMAN  [chap.  xiv. 

remaining  eighteen  fought  to  the  end  with  the  same 
determination  as  the  Romans  themselves.1 

In  Spain  the  Romans  kept  an  army  posted  usually  about 
the  valley  of  the  Ebro  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  or  im- 
_.  .       peding  communications    between   Hannibal  in 

The  war  in       r  ° 

Spain  and       Italy  and  his  base  of  operations  about  Carthago 
1C  y"  Nova,  situated  nearly  midway  between  the  Ebro 

and  the  straits  of  Gades :  they  could  not  for  the  present 
think  of  making  any  permanent  annexation  of  Spanish 
territory.  Sicily  remained  free  from  warlike  operations 
for  two  years  after  Hannibal  crossed  the  Alps  into  Italy. 
During  those  two  years  the  Romans  held  the  western  part 
of  Sicily  as  a  province :  the  rest  of  the  island  belonged  to 
the  Mamertines  of  Messana  or  to  Hieron  of  Syracuse,  and 
both  the  Mamertines  and  Hieron  were  allies  of  the  Romans. 
But  on  the  death  of  Hieron  in  216,  his  grandson  who 
succeeded  him  adopted  a  new  line  of  policy  and  made 
alliance  with  the  Carthaginians.  The  Romans  in  215  de- 
clared war  against  the  Syracusans,  and  by  210  they  had 
annexed  all  the  dominions  that  had  belonged  to  Hieron. 
Those  dominions  contained  thirty  six  towns.  Two  of  these 
towns,  Tauromenium  and  Neetum,  were  specially  favoured 
by  being  received  as  allies  on  the  same  terms  as  the 
Mamertines  and  the  Italians,  subject  only  to  an  obligation 
to  furnish  troops  when  required :  the  remaining  thirty  four 
towns  were  incorporated  in  the  existing  province  of  Sicily, 
and  were  ordered  to  pay  to  the  Romans  the  same  tithes  of 
their  produce  as  they  had  been  accustomed  to  render  to 
Hieron.2  When  these  arrangements  were  completed  all  Sicily 
was  Roman  provincial  territory  except  the  three  towns  of 
Messana,  Tauromenium,  and  Neetum,  which  were  counted 

1  Livy  27.  9  and  10. 

2  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  93,  n.  8,  from  Cicero,  in  Verrem.  Act.  3.  43, 
109,  and  following  chapters. 


chap,  xiv.]  CONSTITUTION,  264  B.C.-201  B.C.  225 

as  allies  and  were  permitted  to  govern  themselves,  provided 
that  they  duly  furnished  their  contingents  to  the  Romans. 

Before  the  Romans  completed  the  conquest  of  Italy  they 
had  put  an  end  to  the  contest  between  the  orders:  and  accord- 
ingly the   Roman   government   was  conducted 
from  264  B.C.  till  201  B.C.,  when  the  war  against   constitution, 
Hannibal  came  to  an  end,  in  greater  harmony   ^4  B.C.- 
than  at  any  other  period  in  the  history  of  the 
republic.     The  organs  of  the  government  were  (1)  the  magis- 
trates ;  (2)  the  senate ;  (3)  the  assemblies  of  the  burgesses. 
Of  these  three  the  senate  was  decidedly  the  most  influential. 

The  magistrates  had  now  become  numerous;   it  is  not 
necessary  to  specify  in  detail  the  work  done  by  each  of 
them,  since   all  the  magistrates,  including  the   (X)  Mag-is- 
tribunes  of  the  plebs,1  now  consulted  the  senate  trates- 
before  taking  any  important  step,  and  therefore  conflicts  did 
not  arise  between  them.     The  command  of  armies  or  fleets 
belonged  to  the  chief  curule  magistrates,  to  consuls,  praetors, 
and  occasionally  a  dictator :  judicial  work  was  superintended 
by  the  praetors :  a  general  watchfulness  over  all  departments 
of  government  was  exercised  by  the  tribunes.      Two  new 
titles  of  magistrates  were  brought  into  common  use  during 
this   period  by   the  exigencies   of   long    wars.      It    often 
happened  that  a  consul  or  a  praetor  in  command  of  an  army 
came  to  the  end  of  the  year  for  which  he  had  been  elected 
before  he  had  completed  the  military  work  on  which  he 
was  employed.     In   such   cases   the   senate  prolonged  his 
imperium,  and  he  continued  to  command  his  army,  but  now 
bore  the  title    of  proconsul   or  propraetor,  since  he  was 
deemed  to  be  the  deputy  of  the  man  who  had  been  chosen 
to  succeed  him  as  consul  or  praetor. 

1  Livy,  22.  61.  8,  gives  an  instance  in  the  year  216  B.C.  in  which  a  tribune 
consulted  the  senate.  For  comments  on  the  power  of  the  tribunes  to  ask 
advice  of  the  senate,  see  Mommsen,  Staatsr.,  2.  296,  in  edition  of  1874 

P 


226  SENATE  [chap.  xiv. 

The  senate  consisted  of  all  men  who  had  been  placed  in 

the  list  of  senators  by  the  censors :  when  once  a  man  had 

u*  become  a  senator  he  remained  a  senator  for  life, 

(2)  The 

senate:  unless   he   were    removed   by   the    censors   for 

composition.  especially  disgraceful  conduct.  Till  216  B.C.  the 
censors  were  under  no  restrictions  in  their  choice  of  senators, 
but  naturally  they  chose  men  who  had  distinguished  them- 
selves as  magistrates.  In  the  year  216  B.C.,  when  more  than 
half  the  senators  had  been  killed  at  the  battle  of  Cannae,  it 
was  necessary  to  follow  some  rule  in  filling  up  the  vacancies  : 
and  M.  Fabius  Buteo  being  appointed  dictator  for  the 
purpose,  admitted  into  the  senate  all  those  who  had  held 
any  magistracy,1  curule  or  non-curule,  since  the  last  census, 
and  all  those  who  had  been  awarded  special  distinction  for 
signal  deeds  of  military  virtue.  The  precedent  that  he  set 
was  regularly  followed  by  the  censors  on  subsequent 
occasions. 

The  powers  of  the  senate  may  be  expressed  by  saying  that 
from  being  the  adviser  of  the  magistrates  it  had  become 
The  senate:  their  controller.  It  had  for  generations  been 
powers.  consulted  on  the  expenditure  of  any  large  sum 

of  money,  on  the  undertaking  of  campaigns,  and  on  the 
assignment  of  military  commands  to  magistrates.  Now  it 
gave  its  opinion  on  all  these  subjects  and  on  many  more ; 
and  its  opinion  was  followed.  It  possessed  in  consequence 
the  power  of  the  purse  and  all  that  went  with  that  power. 
It  settled  what  campaigns  should  be  undertaken,  what 
magistrate  should  be  in  command,  and  what  troops  should 
be  under  him :  it  could  prolong  the  command  of  a  magis- 
trate after  the  end  of  his  year  of  office,  and  on  the  comple- 
tion of  his  war  could  give  or  withhold  the  honour  of  a 

1  The  magistracies  included  the  offices  of  consul,  prtetor,  aedile,  tribune 
of  the  plebs,  but  not  of  quaestor  or  legionary  tribune.  Men  who  had  been 
dictators  or  censors  would  not  need  to  be  considered  by  Fabius  Buteo, 
because  it  was  certain  they  would  be  senators  already. 


chap,  xiv.]  COMITIA  CENTURIATA  227 

triumph.  It  received  all  ambassadors  from  foreign  states, 
resolved  what  treaties  should  be  made,  and  thus  controlled 
the  whole  foreign  policy  of  Rome.1 

The  assemblies  of  the  people  were  the  comitia  centuriata, 
the  comitia  tributa,  and  the  concilium  plebis.  The  only 
habitual  attendants  in  any  of  these  assemblies  M 

*  t  m  The  assem- 

were  those  Roman  citizens  who  lived  either  in   bliesofthe 
Rome  or  so  near  to  it  that  they  could  come  to   people- 
vote  without  being  long  absent  from  their  daily  occupa- 
tions. 

In  the  comitia  centuriata  the  number  of  centuries  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  a  hundred  and  ninety  three  under  the  rules 
in  force  till  264  and  later.  The  first  class  of  comitia 
infantry  had  eighty  centuries,  the  next  three  centunata- 
classes  had  twenty  each,  and  the  fifth  had  thirty.  Before 
the  year  215  the  numbers  of  centuries  in  the  several  classes 
had  been  slightly  altered,  in  order  to  provide  that  for  the 
sake  of  simplicity  all  the  fighting  men  in  any  given  tribe 
might  be  placed  together  in  a  moderate  number  of  centuries. 
There  were  thirty  five  tribes :  all  the  men  in  any  one  tribe 
whose  property  entitled  them  to  be  placed  in  the  first  class 
were  enrolled  in  two  centuries,  one  of  which  contained  all 
the  men  under  forty  seven  years  of  age,  called  the  juniores, 
the  other  being  composed  of  seniores,  men  past  the  age  for 
service  in  the  field.  It  is  supposed,  though  not  recorded, 
that  all  the  men  in  any  one  tribe  whose  property  came  up 
to  the  standard  of  the  second  class  were  also  enrolled  in  one 
century  of  juniores  and  in  one  of  seniores,  and  in  like 
manner  the  men  of  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  classes.  If 
the  supposition  is  correct,  all  the  fighting  men  of  one  tribe 
were  placed  in  ten  centuries.  The  men  of  one  tribe  in  the 
first  class  filled  two  entire  centuries,  and  controlled  two 
votes  in  the  comitia  centuriata :  the  men  of  one  tribe  in  the 

1  Polybius,  6.  13,  15  and  17. 


228  COMITIA  TRIBUTA  [chap.  xiv. 

lower  classes  certainly  did  not  fill  whole  centuries,  but  at 
most  only  about  a  third  part  of  two  centuries  of  each  class : 
for  we  know  that  the  total  number  of  centuries  still 
remained  fixed  at  a  hundred  and  ninety  three.1  Under  the 
new  arrangement  the  centuries  in  the  first  class  were 
eighteen  of  cavalry,  one  of  smiths  and  carpenters,  and  only 
seventy  (no  longer  eighty)  of  infantry.  The  new  organisa- 
tion of  the  centuriate  assembly  appears  conspicuously  in  its 
meeting  held  in  215  B.C.  for  the  election  of  consuls :  on  that 
occasion  the  century  that  gave  its  vote  first  consisted  of 
the  juniores  of  the  tribe  Aniensis.2  The  business  of  the 
assembly  of  centuries  consisted  mainly  in  elections  of  the 
greater  curule  officers :  on  rare  occasions  it  also  included  a 
vote  on  a  question  of  peace  or  war.  It  was  still  qualified  to 
pass  laws,  but  legislation  was  seldom  proposed  to  it  by  the 
great  curule  magistrates  who  were  its  presidents. 

The  comitia  tributa  was  a  gathering  of  the  whole  body 
of  Roman  citizens,  patricians  and  plebeians  alike,  arranged 
Comitia  in  thirty  five  local  tribes.     Till  312  B.C.  none  but 

tnbuta.  landowners  had  been  tribesmen.     In  that  year 

the  censor  Appius  Claudius  admitted  landless  men  to  all 
the  tribes  indiscriminately,  wishing  probably  that  the  votes 
of  a  large  number  of  tribes  might  be  determined  by  men 
who  would  not  resist  corrupt  influences:  but  eight  years 
later  in  304  B.C.  another  censor,  Q.  Fabius  Rullianus,  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  more  independent  citizens,  placed  all  the 
landless  men  in  the  four  urban  tribes,  so  that  henceforth 
they  could  influence  only  something  less  than  an  eighth 
part  of  the  votes.8  In  its  composition  and  arrangement  the 
comitia  tributa  differed  from  the  concilium  plebis  only  in 
that  it  included  the  small  body  of  the  patricians,  for  whom 

1  Cicero,  de  Rep.,  2.  22  (39),  tells  us  that  in  his  time  there  were  a  hundred 
and  ninety  three  centuries  in  all,  and  the  infantry  of  the  first  class  was  all 
nlaced  in  seventy  centuries. 

■  Livy,  24.  7.  2  and  24.  8.  20.  8  Livy,  9.  46. 


chap,  xiv.]  CONCILIUM  PLEBIS  229 

there  was  of  course  no  place  in  the  concilium  plebis. 
Hence  it  has  come  about  that  Livy,  and  perhaps  some  other 
ancient  writers,  and  certainly  many  modern  critics,  have 
made  no  clear  distinction  between  the  comitia  tributa  and 
the  concilium  plebis.  Mommsen,  however,  has  proved  that 
in  the  comitia  tributa  the  presiding  officer  was  a  curule 
magistrate,  whereas  in  the  concilium  plebis  the  president  was 
a  tribune.1  In  the  period  now  before  us  the  business  regularly 
carried  on  in  the  comitia  tributa  was  the  election  of  the 
curule  sediles,  quaestors,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  field 
officers  called  tribuni  militum,  of  whom  there  were  six  to 
every  legion.2 

The  concilium  plebis  was  in  its  composition  what  it  had 
been  long  ago,  but  for  the  facts  that  the  tribes  were  now 
thirty  five,  and  that  landless  plebeians  had  ob-  concilium 
tained  admission  to  the  four  urban  tribes :  but  Plebls- 
the  importance  of  its  work  had  greatly  increased  since  the 
Lex  Hortensia  had  given  it  power  to  make  laws  binding  on 
all  Roman  citizens,  and  it  was  now  the  only  active  legislative 
assembly  in  the  Roman  state.  The  extended  powers  which 
it  enjoyed  did  not  seduce  it  into  hasty  legislation,  because 
the  landowners  who  composed  thirty  one  tribes  were  cautious, 
and  because  the  tribunes,  who  alone  could  propose  a  rogatio 
for  its  acceptance,  never  brought  one  forward  till  they  had 
ascertained  that  the  senate  thought  it  could  be  passed 
without  imprudence. 

In  the  Roman  constitution  during  the  sixty  years  after 
•the  conquest  of  Italy  was  achieved,  the  senate  was  habitually 
the  controlling  body,  because  in  Rome  during  the  early 

1  The  clearest  evidence  comes  from  a  passage  in  Fronto,  de  aquce  ductibus, 
129,  which  quotes  verbatim  a  law  passed  in  9  B.C.  in  the  comitia  tributa 
under  the  presidency  of  a  consul.  On  the  comitia  tributa  generally,  see 
Mommsen,  Staatsr.,  3.  322,  ed.  of  1887. 

2  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  1.  5096.  Mommsen,  Staatsr.,  2.  540,  541  n.  5,  in 
ed.  of  1874. 


230  COMMENTS  OX  [chap.  xiv. 

part  of  its  career  foreign  policy  took  precedence  of  home 
affairs  more  conspicuously  than  in  any  other  state  at  a 
Comments  like  stage  of  progress,  and  the  senate  was  ex- 
on  the  con-     tremely  well  qualified  to  deal  with  foreign  policy. 

stitution,  _,         .  ,  , 

264  B.C.-  -DUt  the  senate  was  by  no  means  a  supreme  ruler 
201  B.C.  0f  the  state  governing  in  its  own  right,  like  the 
senate  of  the  Venetian  republic  in  the  thirteenth  century. 
The  right  to  sit  in  the  senate  was  not  hereditary,  and  was 
not  conferred  by  the  existing  senators,  but  by  the  censors, 
who  in  choosing  new  senators  usually  took  men  who  had 
been  elected  as  magistrates  by  one  of  the  three  popular 
assemblies:  thus  the  composition  of  the  senate  depended 
indirectly  on  the  results  of  popular  elections.  Moreover, 
the  powers  of  the  senate  could,  as  Polybius  has  pointed  out, 
be  annihilated  at  pleasure  by  the  concilium  plebis :  if  the 
plebs  had  chanced  to  be  dissatisfied  with  the  actions  of  the 
senate,  it  was  free  to  choose  tribunes  who  shared  its 
opinions,  and  any  one  of  those  tribunes  could  not  only  stop 
the  senate  from  passing  a  senatus  consultum,  but  could 
prohibit  the  senators  from  coming  together : x  thus  in  the 
last  resort  the  master  of  the  Roman  state  was  not  the 
senate  but  the  concilium  plebis.  In  practice  the  popular 
assembly  did  not  use  the  power  which  it  undoubtedly 
possessed  of  interfering  with  the  doings  of  the  senate  or 
the  magistrates;  the  three  organs  of  the  government, 
magistrates,  senate,  and  popular  assemblies,  acted  together 
separately  but  harmoniously  in  their  proper  spheres  of 
business,  and  Rome  during  the  period  before  us  presents  us 
with  a  conspicuous  example  of  a  mixed  or  balanced  con- 
stitution in  which  all  those  members  of  the  community 
who  lived  in  or  near  Rome  enjoyed  such  powers  and 
undertook  such  duties  as  were  suited  to  their  several 
capacities. 

1  Polybius,  6.  16. 


chap,  xiv.]  THE  CONSTITUTION  231 

During  the  long  wars  in  which  the  Romans  had  been 
engaged  new  social  distinctions  had  arisen  and  had  established 
a  new  gradation  of  classes.      The  generals  who 

t  .  r  Social  classes 

had   led    the   armies   of  the  republic    to   their  in  the  Roman 
many   victories   had   been    curule   magistrates,  ^"^h?" 
and  in  recognition  of  their  services  some  marks  curule 
of  honour   had   been  given   to    their   families. 
Their  descendants  in  the  male  lines  were  permitted  to  keep 
waxen  masks  of  their  curule  ancestors,  and  at  funerals  to 
appoint  men  to  wear  these  masks  and  to  personate  the  men 
from  whom  they  were  taken ;  boys  descended  from  a  curule 
ancestor  wore  a  golden  amulet  case  called  bulla,  such  as 
was  worn  by  a  victorious  general  in  his  triumphal  proces- 
sion :  the  men  wore  gold  rings.1     In  the  days  when  curule 
magistracies   were  open   to  none  but  patricians,  the  men 
who  attained  to  curule  rank  were  drawn  for  the  most  part 
from  a  small  number  out  of  the  many  patrician  gentes.2     It 
was   supposed   that   there    were    three   hundred   patrician 
gentes;  but  the  curule  magistrates  before  367  were  taken 
mainly  from  only  a  small  fraction  of  them,  in  which  the 
gentes  Valeria,  Horatia,  Postumia,  Fabia,  Manlia  were  con- 
spicuous.    In  like  manner,  after  the  consulship  had  been 
made   accessible   to   the  plebeians  by   the   Licinian  Laws, 
consuls,  praetors,  and  curule  sediles  were  selected  in  a  large 
proportion  of  the  years  from  about  twenty  five  gentes,  fifteen 
of  them  being  patrician   and  eight   or   ten  plebeian.3     In 
201  B.C.  there  may  have  been  nearly  a  hundred  families 
descended    from    curule    magistrates,    since    one    of   the 
favoured  twenty  five  gentes  would  provide  more  than  one 
such  family,  as  the  Gens  Fabia  produced  the  Maximi,  the 
Buteones,  and  the  Rulliani,  and  several  of  the  less  favoured 

1  Mommsen,  Hist. ,  2.  316  n. 

2  A  gens  ^  as  a  group  of  families  having  a  common  gentile  name. 

3  Mommsen,  Hist.,  2.  325  n. 


232  SOCIAL  [chap.  xiy. 

gentes  had  at  least  one  such  family.  These  families,  which 
were  called  curule,  did  not  gain  by  law  any  political 
advantage  over  the  rest  of  the  citizens:  but  practically  a 
member  of  a  curule  family  had  a  jbetter  chance  than  a 
man  of  undistinguished  birth  of  being  elected  to  a 
magistracy  by  the  centuriate  assembly.  Thus  the  curule 
families  had  established  themselves  as  a  new  nobility 
exalted  above  those  patricians  who  had  no  curule  ancestors, 
and  still  more  above  those  plebeians  whose  families  had 
never  held  the  highest  magistracies. 

Among  the  curule  families  themselves  no  strongly  marked 

inequality  was  perceptible.     A  Licinius  Varus  or  a  Licinius 

Crassus  Dives,  belonging  to  the  same  plebeian 

equality  of      gens  which  had  produced   Licinius   Stolo,   the 

the  cumie       author   of  the  Licinian  Laws,  stood  almost  on 

families. 

a  par  with  the  patrician  Fabii  and  Manlii  and 
Cornelii;  the  distinction  of  curule  rank  had  almost  obliterated 
the  memory  of  bygone  differences  between  its  patrician 
and  its  plebeian  possessors.  The  eminent  position  enjoyed 
by  the  curule  families  was  as  yet  only  a  social  distinction, 
but  the  time  might  come  when  it  would  convert  them  into 
an  order  endowed  with  exclusive  political  privileges. 

Next  after  the  curule  families  who  formed  the  nobility 
came  those  senators  who  were  not  of  curule  family.  After 
them  came  the  equites,  men  possessing  not  less 
than  400,000  sesterces  (£4000),  and  enrolled  in 
the  cavalry.  Polybius  says  definitely  that  all  men  who  had 
the  equester  census  of  400,000  sesterces  were  required  to  be 
enrolled  for  ten  years.1  Eighteen  hundred  of  them,  usually 
chosen  from  the  younger  members  of  curule  families,2 
were  enrolled  in  the  eighteen  equestrian  centuries  and 
received  their  horses  from  the  magistrates  at  the  expense 
of  the  treasury.     The  rest  must  have  provided  horses  for 

1  Polybitu,  6.  1.  2.  2  Mommsen,  Hist.,  2.  319. 


chap,  xiv.]  CLASSES  233 

themselves:  but  already  by  the  year  201  B.C.  the  equites 
were  more  like  an  ornamental  order  of  knights  than  an 
effective  part  of  the  army :  during  the  war  against  Hannibal 
the  Romans  drew  their  supplies  of  good  horsemen  not  from 
the  burgesses  but  from  the  allies. 

The  curule  families,  the  senators,  and  the  equites  were 
the  upper  classes ;  the  rest  of  the  Roman  community  formed 
the  middle  class  and  the  poor.     The  middle  class 

,  •    i        /•     i  t  mt  Yeomen, 

consisted  mainly  of  those  sturdy  yeomen,  tilling 

their  freehold  farms,  who  furnished  the  burgess  infantry,  and 
were  placed  by  the  censors  in  the  first  four  classes  of  the 
footmen.  Before  the  invasion  of  Hannibal  the  yeomen  were 
numerous  and  prosperous ;  but  the  invasion  greatly  reduced 
their  numbers  and  damaged  their  well-being :  some  of  them 
had  their  farms  ruined  by  the  invader,  and  many  had  to 
neglect  their  fields  because  all  the  men  were  wanted  for  the 
army.  By  the  end  of  Jthe  war  a  great  part  of  the  yeomen 
had  lost  their  places  in  the  middle  class  and  had  sunk  into 
the  class  below. 

The  poor  lived  in  and  around  Rome.  Their  numbers 
must  have  been  greatly  augmented  before  312  by  manu- 
missions of  slaves,  since  in  312  and  in  306  it  was 

»     ,  .  ,      The  poor. 

a  matter  of  the  utmost  importance  to  settle 
whether  the  landless  men,  who  were  largely  manumitted 
slaves  or  descendants  of  manumitted  slaves,  should  be 
placed  in  all  the  tribes  indiscriminately  or  only  in  the  four 
urban  tribes;1  and  again  during  the  Hannibalic  war  the 
numbers  of  the  poor  were  increased  by  the  ruin  of  the 
farmers  in  outlying  parts  of  Italy.  It  is  manifest  that  the 
poor  were  not  all  alike  in  character.  Those  poor  citizens 
whose  families  had  never  possessed  any  land  were  ready  to 
give  their  votes  as  they  were  bidden  by  the  rich :  those  who 
had   till   recently  been   landowning   farmers   retained   the 

1  See  p.  228. 


234  ADMINISTRATION  OF  [chap.  xiv. 

habit  of  thinking  for  themselves  and  of  expressing  their 
opinions  in  their  votes.  It  could  not,  however,  be  expected 
that  in  the  next  generation  the  children  of  the  ruined 
farmers  would  be  independent  in  thought  and  action  merely 
because  their  fathers  had  once  enjoyed  an  economic  in- 
dependence which  they  themselves  had  never  experienced. 

The  Romans,  as  we  have  seen,  did  not  govern  the  Latin 
colonies  or  the  Italian  towns  any  more  than  the  Athenians 
Administra-  governed  the  cities  dependent  on  them.  But  as 
tion  of  justice   tlie  Athenians  had  found  it  necessary  to  judge 

between  J  . 

members  of  suits  about  property  that  arose  between  citizens 
communities  °^  different  cities,  the  Romans  also  found  it  to  be 
in  Italy.  incumbent  on  them  to  do  the  same  thing.     Even 

in  the  period  before  338,  when  the  Latins  were  independent, 
it  was  quite  conceivable  that  a  dispute  about  property  might 
arise  between  a  Roman  and  a  Latin :  for  the  right  of  com- 
mercium  existed  between  Rome  and  the  Latin  towns,  so 
that  a  Roman  could  buy  a  piece  of  land  or  other  property 
from  a  Latin.  When  a  dispute  about  property  arose  in 
the  days  of  the  independence  of  the  Latins,  it  would  be 
decided  by  the  court  in  whose  jurisdiction  the  property 
lay :  if  the  property  lay  in  Rome  by  a  Roman  court,  if  in 
Latin  territory  by  a  Latin  court.  But  as  soon  as  the  Latin 
towns  lost  their  independence,  every  dispute  between  a 
Roman  and  a  Latin,  or  between  members  of  two  Latin 
vassal  towns,  must  be  judged  in  a  Roman  court,  since  none 
but  Roman  officials  had  the  power  to  enforce  the  execution 
of  the  decision  arrived  at.  In  338  the  superintendence  of 
all  jurisdiction  about  property  was  in  the  hands  of  a  single 
praetor,  who,  as  the  cases  arose,  appointed  arbitrators,  and 
told  the  arbitrators  what  question  they  had  to  decide.  Even 
after  the  Romans  conquered  all  Italy  the  superintendence 
of  all  jurisdiction  was  still  lodged  in  the  hands  of  the  single 
praetor. 


chap,  xiv.]  JUSTICE  235 

But  within  twenty  years  after  the  conquest  of  Italy  was 
completed,  the  supervision  of  the  judicature  was  too  much 
work  for  one  man.     In  246  the  Romans  resolved   prxt0T  qui 
to  have  two  praetors :  one  was  prcetor  urbanus  Jus  jnter  Per" 

egrinos 

and  attended  to  suits  in  which  both  litigants  dicit:  246 
were  Romans :  the  other  had  the  jurisdictio  B,c* 
inter  peregrinos,  and  arranged  for  the  hearing  of  suits  in 
which  one  or  both  of  the  litigants  was  Italian  or  Latin.1  For 
the  settlement  of  such  suits  the  praetors  could  not  be  guided 
by  the  Roman  civil  law  founded  on  the  twelve  tables  of  the 
Decemviri,  because  that  law  recognised  rights  which  the 
Romans  did  not  intend  to  bestow  on  the  Latins  and 
the  Italians.  It  was  impossible  to  assign  to  each  litigant 
the  rights  that  he  would  have  under  the  law  of  his  own 
town,  since  that  procedure  would  give  one  result  when  the 
rights  of  the  plaintiff  were  determined  by  the  law  of  his 
town,  and  possibly  a  very  different  result  when  the  rights 
of  the  defendant  were  determined  by  the  law  of  his.  Hence 
the  praetors  had  to  adopt  some  other  course.  They  picked 
out  to  begin  with  a  few  principles  or  maxims  common  to 
the  systems  of  law  prevailing  in  a  good  number  of  Latin 
and  Italian  communities,  and  when  a  praetor  on  beginning 
his  year  of  office  put  out  an  edict  or  announcement  of  his 
intentions,  he  declared  that  he  would  be  guided  by  those 
principles  or  maxims  in  dealing  with  litigations.  In  order 
to  pick  out  maxims  for  insertion  in  the  edict  the  praetor 
was  compelled  to  study  many  systems  of  law :  and  the 
practice  of  studying  systems  of  law  not  made  in  Rome 
contributed  largely  towards  making  the  Roman  lawyers 
what  they  afterwards  became — the  greatest  masters  of 
jurisprudence  whom  the  world  has  seen.  How  far  the 
process  of  studying  bodies  of  law  not  made  in  Rome  was 
carried  in  the  period  now  before  us  I  cannot  say,  nor  do  I 

1  Digest,  I.  2.  2.  28. 


236  POLITICAL  ORGANISATION        [chap.  xiv. 

know  what  progress  was  then  made  in  fashioning  the  edicts 
of  the  praetors  into  a  body  of  laws  suitable  for  application  to 
all  suits  about  property  that  could  arise  in  Italy :  but  there 
is  no  doubt  that  even  in  that  early  period  the  Latins  and 
the  Italians  respected  the  Romans  for  the  justice  of  the  laws 
which  they  used  in  suits  in  which  a  Latin  or  Italian  were 
involved,  and  for  the  care  which  they  bestowed  on  the 
management  of  judicature. 

Until  the  time  of  the  war  against  Hannibal,  Italy  was  kept 
in  a  very  fair  degree  of  prosperity  and  welfare  under  the 
Comments  suzerainty  of  those  Roman  citizens  who  lived  in 
on  the  and  around  Rome.     The  prosperity  and  tolerable 

political  . 

organisation  contentment  of  the  Romans  at  a  distance  from 
of  Italy.  Rome,  and  of  the  Latins  and  of  the  Italians,  was 

in  fact  destroyed,  as  we  shall  shortly  see,  by  the  addition  to 
the  Roman  dominions  of  great  provinces  beyond  the  sea, 
and  by  the  flood  of  wealth  which  poured  from  the  provinces 
into  Rome,  but  not  into  other  parts  of  the  peninsula.  It  is, 
however,  worth  while  to  put  the  question  whether,  if  Rome 
had  not  acquired  provinces  at  a  distance,  Italy  could  have 
long  continued  to  be  governed  in  moderate  happiness  under 
the  absolute  supremacy  of  those  Roman  citizens  who  lived 
in  Rome  or  near  at  hand.  It  seems  possible  that  if  Italy 
had  lain  stagnant  in  unbroken  peace  towards  the  outer 
world  no  alteration  in  the  existing  political  conditions 
would  have  been  required ;  but,  as  soon  as  the  Italian 
peninsula  had  to  resist  a  foreign  foe,  the  outlying  Romans 
and  the  Latins  and  the  Italians  would  have  demanded  and 
obtained  some  convenient  means  of  expressing  their  opinions 
about  policy  and  the  conduct  of  the  war,  and  the  distribution 
of  the  burdens  of  war  among  different  classes  and  localities 
in  the  peninsula.  The  only  convenient  means  by  which  the 
inhabitants  of  a  large  country  like  Italy  can  express  their 
opinions  are  either  the  election  of  men  to  meet  as  repre- 


chap,  xiv.]  OF  ITALY  237 

sentatives  in  a  single  sovereign  assembly,  or  else  the  union 
of  all  parts  of  the  country  in  a  federation  of  equal  states. 
There  were  no  equal  states  in  Italy,  and  therefore  federation 
would  be  useless  as  a  means  of  contenting  those  parts  of 
the  peninsula  which  lay  remote  from  Home ;  no  expedient 
remained  except  some  kind  of  representative  government 
exercised  in  a  single  sovereign  assembly.  Representative 
government  would  probably  have  given  contentment  and 
internal  peace  to  Italy ;  but  it  would  have  destroyed  the 
supremacy  of  those  Romans  who  lived  in  or  around  Rome. 


CHAPTER   XV 

ROME,   ITALY,   AND   THE   PROVINCES,   201    B.C.-46   B.C. 

When  the  Romans  had  in  201  B.C.  frustrated  Hannibal's 
attempt  to  conquer  Italy,  they  thought  it  necessary,  with  a 
view  of  making  similar  attempts  impossible  for  the  future, 
to  undertake  some  permanent  responsibilities  in  Africa  and 
Spain:  and  about  the  same  time,  desiring  to  check  the 
ambition  of  Philip  the  Fifth  of  Macedonia,  who  had  for 
a  while  been  in  alliance  with  Hannibal,  they  made  an 
intervention  in  the  lands  that  lie  around  the  eastern  part 
of  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  From  these  beginnings  they 
were  gradually  led  on  to  the  acquisition  of  large  depend- 
encies, which  in  46  B.C.  included  the  whole  civilised  world. 
From  201  to  46  their  fortunes  were  determined  for  the  most 
part  by  their  relations  to  their  dependencies  and  to  foreign 
peoples :  and  accordingly  their  history  during  that  interval 
of  a  century  and  a  half  may  be  divided  into  periods  which 
are  here  set  forth. 

Period  i.  Acquisition  of  distant  dependencies,  201  b.c- 
133  b.c. 

Period  el  Dissensions  among  classes  of  the  Romans 
about  the  spoils  of  the  dependencies,  133  B.C. -106  b.c. 

Period  hi.  War  for  the  defence  of  Italy  and  creation  of  a 
great  mercenary  army,  106  B.c-91  B.C. 

Period  iv.  Revolt  of  the  Italian  allies,  91  b.c-89  b.c. 

Period  v.  Predominance  of  armies  and  generals,  88  b.c- 
46  b.c. 

238 


chap,  xv.]  DEPENDENCIES  239 

PERIOD   I.   ACQUISITION  OF  DEPENDENCIES,  201  B.C.-133  B.C. 

The  period  from  201  B.C.  to  133  B.C.  in  which  the  Romans 
acquired  their  first  large  group  of  dependencies  is  itself 
divided  into  two  parts : 

(1).  Acquisition  of  protectorates,  201  b.c-146  b.c 

(2).  Acquisition  of  territories,  146  B.c-133  B.C. 

When    the    Romans    had    in    201    decisively    defeated 
Hannibal  at  Zama  in  Africa,  they  took  precautions  against 
future  attack  from  the  side  of  Carthage.     They  ^  Acquisi- 
did    not    think    it    necessary    to    demand    any  tionof 

Dt"otcctor3.tcs 

territory    for    themselves    in    Africa,    but    they  20I  b.c.- 
promised   their   protection  to   Massinissa,  King  *46  BC- 

i.      i         xr        • -,.  i  c      i       Precautions 

oi  the  Numidians,  a  resolute  enemy  ol  the  against 
Carthaginians,  and  with  the  intention  of  render-  Cartha&e. 
ing  Carthage  innocuous  permitted  him  to  worry  the 
Carthaginians  as  much  as  he  chose.  The  Spanish  penin- 
sula had  served  as  an  excellent  base  of  operations  for 
Hamilcar  Barca  and  Hannibal,  and  might  yet  be  used  for 
the  like  purpose  by  some  one  like  them.  Therefore  the 
Romans  did  not  in  201  withdraw  their  armies  from 
Spain :  and  in  197,  thinking  that  they  ought  for  their 
security  to  make  a  permanent  occupation  of  the  country, 
they  acted  as  if  southern  Spain  were  already  their  property 
by  sending  two  prsetors  to  act  as  its  governors.  From  that 
time  the  territory  which  they  pretended  to  have  annexed 
was  deemed  to  be  formed  into  the  two  provinces  of  Hither 
Spain  and  Further  Spain:1  but  for  sixty  six  years  till 
133  b.c.  it  was  the  scene  of  incessant  wars  against  the 
native  tribes,  and  must  have  cost  the  Romans  far  more  for 
the  maintenance  of  armies  than  it  rendered  in  tribute. 

From  Carthage  the  Romans  turned  their  attention  to  the 
east.     In  the  seas  of  Greece  and  Asia  Philip  the  Fifth,  King 

1  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  100,  101, 


240  PROTECTORATES  [chat,  xv. 

of  Macedonia,  was  employed  from  about  205  onwards  in 
mercilessly  pillaging  the  cities  of  Asia  Minor  and  the 
Precautions  Cyclades,  with  which  the  Romans  desired  to 
against  trade  at  ease.     The  Romans  in  200,  seeing  that 

Philip  would  be  dangerous  to  them  unless  he 
were  checked,  intervened  on  behalf  of  the  cities.  When 
after  four  years  of  arduous  war  they  had  in  197  defeated 
Philip  at  Cynoscephalse  in  Thessaly,  they  declared  that  all 
the  Hellenic  states  on  the  European  mainland  should  be 
free — that  is  to  say,  should  own  no  protector  other  than 
Rome.  By  this  action  they  offended  Antiochus,  King  of 
Asia,  who  had  hoped  to  make  conquests  in  Europe:  and 
twenty  six  years  later  their  position  as  sole  protectors  of  the 
Hellenic  states  of  Europe  was  also  resented  by  Perseus,  son 
of  Philip.  In  191  they  were  attacked  by  Antiochus,  and  in 
171  by  Perseus.  They  defeated  Antiochus  in  two  years  and 
Perseus  in  four.  From  168,  when  they  vanquished  Perseus 
at  Pydna  in  Macedonia,  they  were  free  for  twenty  two  years 
till  146  from  all  wars  except  those  which  they  had  to  wage 
incessantly  against  Spanish  tribesmen. 

The  Romans  during  their  wars  from  200  to  168,  though 
they  won  three  very  conspicuous  victories — over  Philip  at 
Prot  ct  r  t  Cynoscephalse,  over  Antiochus  at  Magnesia  near 
2oo  B.C.-  Smyrna,  and  over  Perseus  at  Pydna,  took  no 
fresh  territory,  and  were  reluctant  to  take  states 
under  their  protection  :  but  the  states  which  they  delivered 
from  foreign  masters  could  not  stand  alone,  and  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  ensure  that  no  new  conquerors 
should  get  possession  of  them.  Hence  the  Romans  were 
compelled  to  act  as  their  protectors,  and  the  period  from 
200  to  146  is  marked  out  in  Roman  history  as  the  age  of 
protectorates  under  Roman  suzerainty.  At  the  end  of  the 
period  in  146  the  states  under  Roman  protection  were 
Numidia,  all  the  Greek  states  in  Europe,  Macedonia,  and 


chap,  xv.]  NEW  CONDITIONS  241 

the  greater  part  of  Asia  Minor.  The  provinces  at  the  same 
date  were  Sicily,  Sardinia,  and  the  two  Spains.  None  of  the 
protected  states  except  Macedonia  paid  any  tribute,  and  that 
country  paid  only  a  hundred  talents  (£24,400)  annually.  Of 
the  provinces  Sardinia  and  the  two  Spains  were  unpro- 
ductive, and  Sicily  was  the  only  land  outside  of  Italy  that 
sent  a  steady  revenue  to  the  Roman  treasury. 

Distant  campaigns,   distant  protectorates,   and   the   un- 
assailable  strength   of   Rome   brought  new   features   into 
Roman    public    life    and    into    the    economic 
condition  of  Italy.     Commanders  of  armies  in   conditions 
distant  lands  were  unavoidably  free  from   the   distanf  wars 
control  of  the  senate  as  long  as  their  command   200  b.c- 
lasted :  when  they  came  home  there  was  till  149 
no  regular  process  by  which  their  conduct  could  be  brought 
under  examination  in  a   court   of  law,  and   no  means   of 
punishing  them  if  they  had  behaved  badly  except  a  special 
legislative  enactment  of  pains  and  penalties  passed  in  an 
assembly  on  the  proposal  of  a  tribune  and  resembling  what 
we  call  an  attainder,  or  else  the  institution  by  the  senate 
of   a  special  commission   of  inquiry.1      For  reasons   that 
will  appear  shortly,  neither  of  these  methods  of  procedure 
was  likely  to  inflict  retribution  for  wrong-doing.     Some  few 
commanders,  as  T.  Flamininus  and  ^Emilius  Paullus,  used 
their  independence  honestly :  a  greater  number,  as  Lucullus 
and  Galba  in  Spain  in  151  and  150,  took  it  as  offering  an 
opportunity  for   extortion,  perfidy,  cruelty,  and  massacre. 
The  lesser  officers  in  armies  far  away  also  got  a  share  of 
dishonest  gain :  the  common  soldiers  got  such  share  of  the 
plunder  as  their  general  thought  it  necessary  to  allow  them. 
Contractors  and  ordinary  traders,  who  belonged  generally  to 
the  equites,  got   large  legitimate   profit  from   finding   the 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Ant.,  third  edition.    Repetnndce,  1.  542a,  Judex,  Judicium, 
2.  1027a. 


242  CLASSES  [chap.  xv. 

commissariat  of  armies,  from  undertaking  public  works, 
and  from  importing  foreign  produce :  the  chief  commodities 
brought  into  Italy  were  corn  from  Sicily  and  slaves  from  the 
yEgean  Sea  and  Asia  Minor.  Lastly,  one  fact  did  more  than 
all  the  rest  towards  producing  about  170  a  Roman  com- 
munity very  different  in  habits  of  thought  from  the  Roman 
community  which  had  resisted  Hannibal.  After  the  death 
of  Hannibal,  which  occurred  about  183,  Rome  was  so  strong 
that  it  feared  no  enemy  in  the  world :  consequently  Roman 
citizens  almost  universally  felt  that  henceforth  they  could 
without  danger  engage  in  a  scramble  for  the  wealth  that 
flowed  in  from  foreign  lands,  and  might  safely  regard 
patriotic  conduct  as  a  superfluous  display  of  virtue. 

The  new  conditions  introduced  by  wars  and  victories 
beyond  the  seas  affected  all  classes  in  the  Roman  common- 
Ruin  of  the  wealth  :  their  effect  on  the  yeomen  was  quickly 
Roman  conspicuous.     We    have    already  noticed    that 

during  the  war  against  Hannibal  a  great  part 
of  the  sturdy  farmers,  who  had  formerly  been  the  pith  and 
marrow  of  the  plebeian  order,  had  lost  their  freehold  farms 
and  had  come  to  swell  the  urban  proletariate  of  Rome. 
When  the  war  was  ended  large  quantities  of  land  were  taken 
from  those  Italian  communities  which  had  transferred  their 
allegiance  from  Rome  to  Hannibal;  these  lands  were  dis- 
tributed among  the  soldiers  and  perhaps  some  other  poor 
citizens,  and  thus  founded  a  new  body  of  yeomen  farmers, 
probably  as  numerous  as  those  who  had  been  dispossessed. 
But  the  business  of  a  small  farmer  was  no  longer  profitable. 
Corn  raised  by  slave  labour  was  imported  in  great  quantities 
from  Sicily  immediately  after  Hannibal  had  been  defeated. 
Soon  afterwards  the  great  landowners  in  Italy  imported 
slaves  from  abroad  to  till  their  estates:  for  already  before 
133  B.C.  Tiberius  Gracchus  saw  with  sorrow  that  Italy  was 
full  of  barbaric  prison  houses— the  ergastula,  or  guarded 


chap,  xv.]  IN  EOME  243 

barracks  in  which  the  slaves  were  locked  up  at  night  when 
they  could  not  labour  in  the  fields.1  Thus  both  from  Sicily 
and  from  Italy  came  slave  grown  produce  into  all  the  Italian 
markets :  it  was  cheaper  than  the  produce  of  the  labour  of 
freemen,  because  slaves  could  be  oppressed  and  worked  to 
death  as  freemen  could  not.  It  followed  that  the  small 
farmer  who  employed  the  labour  only  of  himself  and  his 
sons  was  undersold,  and  could  not  dispose  of  his  produce  at 
a  remunerative  price.  The  farmers  therefore  sold  their 
farms  to  rich  men,  and  the  number  of  small  landholders 
among  the  citizens  was  steadily  diminished.  In  the  country 
for  fifty  miles  around  Rome  it  is  likely  that  land  was 
especially  attractive  to  the  rich,  and  that  in  that  district 
the  yeomen  farmers  were  reduced  to  an  insignificant 
remnant. 

In  consequence  of  the   depletion   of  the   ranks   of  the 
yeomen  the  only  important   classes   among  those  Roman 
citizens,  who  lived  in  Rome  or  so  near  to  it  that 
they  could  take  part  in  government,  were  the  old  Roman  com. 
curule  families,  the  equites,  and  the  poor.     The  munity,  200 
decision  of  political  questions  rested  during  the  (1)  The  curule 
period  from  200  to  146  nominally  with  the  curule  kraii!es- 

.  .  ...  (2)  Tfae  poor. 

families  and  the  poor,  but  in  reality  with  the  curule 
families  alone.  A  great  part  of  the  votes  in  the  centuriate 
assembly  and  in  the  concilium  plebis  were  given  by  the  poor, 
or  by  men  who  could  be  influenced  by  the  prospect  of  gain. 
Money,  or  the  prospect  of  it,  could  be  offered  either  by  the 
men  of  the  old  curule  families  or  by  the  equites ;  but  the 
equites  did  not  yet  take  much  part  in  political  matters,  and 
the  control  of  the  popular  assemblies  was  left  to  the  old 
curule  families.  They  were  able  almost  always  to  ensure 
that  the  curule  magistrates  should  be  chosen  from  their 
own  class,  and  the  tribunes  should  be  men  of  whom  they 
1  Plutarch,  Tiberius,  8. 


244  CUKULE  FAMILIES  [chap.  xv. 

approved.  If  a  man  not  of  curule  family  sought  election 
to  a  curule  magistracy  they  called  him  novus  homo,  an 
upstart,  and  were  usually  able  to  turn  the  votes  against 
him :  the  most  distinguished  among  the  few  novi  homines 
elected  in  this  period,  Cato  the  Elder,  only  gained  his 
consulship  in  195  because  his  candidature  was  supported 
by  L.  Valerius  Flaccus,  a  member  of  one  of  the  very  highest 
curule  families.1  As  the  old  curule  families  controlled  the 
elections  they  also  settled  the  composition  of  the  senate  and 
the  nomination  of  generals  for  command  in  distant  war. 
All  men  who  had  been  magistrates,  in  accordance  with  the 
rule  laid  down  by  M.  Fabius  Buteo  in  216,  entered  the  senate 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  filled  more  than  half  the  seats 
in  it:  the  remainder  of  the  seats  were  filled  up  at  the 
discretion  of  the  censors  who  were  themselves  elected 
in  assemblies  managed  by  the  curule  families.  The 
commanders  in  foreign  wars  were  appointed  by  the  senate 
from  among  the  curule  magistrates,  or  from  men  whose 
curule  magistracies  had  just  expired;  it  followed  as  a 
matter  of  course  that  most  of  the  commanders  belonged  to 
the  old  curule  families.  While  they  held  their  commands 
they  could  act  without  fear  of  consequences,  since  neither  a 
tribune  nor  the  senate  was  likely  to  call  them  to  account. 

The  equites,  as  we  can  see  from  a  passage  in  Livy,  still  up 
to  180  B.C.  comprised  all  those  men  with  property  above 
400,000  sesterces  (£4000)  whom  the  censors 
chose  to  require  to  enroll  themselves  in  the 
cavalry:2  and  it  is  not  likely  that  till  after  146  any  change 
in  the  definition  of  an  eques  had  taken  place.  The  equites 
were  still  a  branch  of  the  army  and  not  a  political  order : 
they  had  to  produce  a  horse  before  the  censors,  and  no  man 
was  enrolled  in  the  equites  till  the  censor  had  uttered  the 
words  traduc  eqtcum, '  lead  on  your  horse.'    Some  few  of  them 

1  Plutarch,  Cato  Major,  3.  2  Livy,  39.  19.  4. 


chap,  xv.]  EQUITES  245 

saw  actual  service,  but  Mommsen  thinks  these  were  probably 
only  such  as  desired  to  become  officers:  the  rest  perhaps 
had  no  military  duties  beyond  riding  in  the  transvectio 
equitum  every  fifteenth  of  July  when  the  knights  rode  in 
procession  .from  the  temple  of  Mars  without  the  walls  to  the 
temple  of  the  Dioscuri  in  the  forum.1  The  greater  part 
of  the  equites  were  capitalists  who  only  played  at  being 
cavalry  soldiers,  and  who  did  not  gain  any  of  the  titles  of 
senator,  sedile,  tribune,  or  higher  magistrate,  which  would 
have  eclipsed  their  title  of  equites  as  a  peerage  now  eclipses 
a  baronetcy,  although  it  would  not  cancel  their  right  to 
call  themselves  equites  if  they  chose,  so  long  as  they  were 
enrolled  among  the  cavalry. 

The   Latin   and   Italian   allies   habitually   furnished   the 
greater  part  of  the  soldiers  employed  by  the  Romans  in 
wars  which  did  not   concern   the   allies ;   their   The  Latin 
contingents  were  employed  in  the  most  distaste-   ^  Italian 
ful  services;   and  when   their  campaigns  were   200 B.C. - 
ended  successfully  they  received  far  less  rewards   146  B,c- 
than  those  soldiers  who  were  Roman  citizens.     Livy  in  his 
narrative  of  the  year  180  says  that  a  consular  army  regularly 
consisted  of  two  legions  (8400  men)  of  burgess  infantry,  the 
burgess  cavalry  (600  men)  attached  to  those  two  legions, 
and  15,000  foot  and  800  horse  provided  by  the  Latins:2  for 
seven  years  other  than  180  he  gives  almost  precisely  the 
same  numbers  of  allied  foot  and  horse  furnished  for  service 
with   an   army   of  two   legions.3     At   the   end  of  the  war 
against  Hannibal  the  troops  of  the  allies  did  not  get,  as  the 
citizen  soldiers  did,  their  discharge  and  usually  a  piece  of 
farm  land,  but  twenty  thousand  of  them  were  compelled  to 
continue  their  service  in  Cisalpine  Gaul,  Bruttii,  Sicily  and 
Sardinia,  all  of  them  regions  in  which  plunder  would  be 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  'Equites,'  vol.  1,  p.  755.  2  Livy,  40.  36.  6. 

3  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  1.  383,  n.  4,  gives  references  to  the  passages. 


246  ACQUISITION  [chap.  xv. 

scanty.1  In  the  year  177,  when  M.  Claudius  Marcellus 
celebrated  a  triumph  for  the  subjugation  of  peoples  in 
Histria  and  Liguria,  the  Roman  legionary  soldiers  received 
fifteen  denarii  apiece  and  the  soldiers  of  the  allies  only  half 
as  much :  in  the  triumphal  procession  the  men  of  the  allies 
showed  their  discontent  by  joining  in  none  of  the  shouts 
of  the  Romans.2  Mommsen  further  states,  from  some 
authority  which  I  have  not  succeeded  in  finding,  that  when 
lands  were  distributed  in  northern  Italy  the  Roman  citizens 
received  ten  jugera  apiece,  the  allies  only  three.3  All  the 
allies,  both  Latin  and  Italian,  must  have  felt  the  oppression 
of  Roman  suzerainty,  because  it  compelled  them  to  serve 
in  laborious  wars  from  which  all  the  gain  went  to  the 
Roman  citizens.  The  Italians,  however,  were  subject  to 
worse  oppression  than  the  Latins :  for  we  learn  that  in  the 
year  177  the  Samnites  and  Pelignians,  who  were  Italian 
allies,  asked  the  Roman  senate  to  reduce  their  contingents 
of  soldiers  on  the  ground  that  four  thousand  of  their 
families  had  migrated  to  the  Latin  colony  of  Fregellse.4 
This  large  migration  proves  that  it  was  more  uncomfortable 
to  live  in  an  Italian  allied  state  than  in  a  Latin  colony. 

The  Romans  from  197  onwards  found  their  protectorates 
troublesome  because  the  protected  states,  especially  in 
(2)  Acquisi-  Greece,  persisted  in  making  petty  leagues  for 
tion  of  the  purpose  of  fighting  with  one  another,  and  in 

146  B.C.- '  consequence  the  senate  gradually  formed  the 
133  B.C.  opinion  that  provinces  ruled  by  Roman  officers 

would  be  preferable  to  vassal  peoples  under  native  govern- 
ments. From  146  the  Romans  acted  on  this  opinion  in 
many  instances :  in  that  year,  after  wars  conducted  by  Q. 
Metellus  and  L.  Mummius,  they  took  Macedonia  and  Greece 

1  Livy,  31.  8.  5-10.  2  Livy,  41.  13.  8. 

3  Mommsen,  Hist.,  2.  333. 

4  Ibid.,  2.  332,  from  Livy,  41.  8.  8. 


chap,  xv.]  OF  TERRITORIES  247 

under  their  own  rule  with  the  title  of  the  province  of 
Macedonia.  At  the  same  time,  yielding  to  the  persistent 
clamours  of  Cato  and  the  desires  of  the  Roman  capitalists, 
who  disliked  any  rivals  in  commerce  so  successful  as  the 
Carthaginians,  they  destroyed  Carthage,  killed  most  of  its 
seven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  and  took  its  territory, 
which  had  already  been  reduced  to  small  dimensions,  to 
themselves  as  the  province  of  Africa.  In  133,  when  Scipio 
^Emilianus  captured  the  Spanish  town  of  Numantia,  they 
were  able  to  put  an  end  to  the  long  wars  in  the  two  Spains, 
and  to  rule  them  as  settled  provinces.  In  the  same  year, 
on  the  death  of  their  ally  Attalus  the  Third,  King  of 
Pergainum,  they  received  under  his  will  his  treasure  and 
his  large  territory :  they  kept  the  western  part  of  his 
kingdom  as  the  province  of  Asia,  and  gave  the  rest  to 
princes  and  states  under  their  protection.  Thus  in  133 
the  provincial  territory  owned  by  the  Romans  included 
Sicily,  Sardinia,  the  two  Spains,  Macedonia  and  Greece, 
and  parts  of  Africa  and  Asia. 

PERIOD   II.      DISSENSIONS   AMONG  CLASSES   ABOUT  THE 
SPOILS  OF   THE   DEPENDENCIES,   133   B.C.-106   B.C. 

The  period  from  133  to  106  was  marked  by  disagreements 

between  classes  at  Rome  in  regard  to  the  use  to  be  made 

of  the  plunder  of  the  dependencies,  which  had 

.  .  Summary, 

hitherto  been  enjoyed  almost  exclusively  by  the 

curule  families.     From  133  to  121  the  dissensions  were  so 

sharp  as  to  lead  to  violent  conflicts  between  mobs  of  armed 

civilians  and  to  many  murders  for  political  purposes :  but 

they  stopped   short  of  battles   between   armies.     Through 

the  exertions  of  Tiberius  and  Gaius  Gracchus  between  133 

and  121   arrangements  were  made  which  provided   for  a 

moderately  even  division  of  the  booty  from  the  dependencies 

among  the  classes  of  the  citizens.     After  the  death  of  Gaius 


248  TIBERIUS  [chap.  xv. 

Gracchus  in  121  the  curule  families  regained  exclusive 
control  of  Roman  policy.  They  did  not  dare  to  meddle 
with  the  distribution  of  the  existing  booty  from  the 
dependencies :  but  they  invented  a  new  source  of  gain  by 
taking  bribes  from  a  foreign  enemy  of  the  Roman  state. 
The  classes  which  suffered  from  their  treason  were  dis- 
contented and  angry,  and  waited  for  an  opportunity  to 
deprive  them  of  their  misused  authority. 

In  133  Tiberius  Sempronius  Gracchus,  head  of  one  of 

the  proudest  of  the  curule  families,  after  useful  services 

performed  in  the  wars  in  Spain,  began  at  thirty 

Tiberius         years  of  age  to  take  part  in  Roman  political  life 

Gracchus,       His  father,  whose  three  names  were  the  same  as 

133  B.C. 

his  own,  had  been  twice  consul  and  had  also  been 
censor,  and  had  been  conspicuously  honest  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  Hither  Spain ;  his  mother  was  Cornelia,  daughter 
of  Scipio  Africanus  Major  who  had  received  the  submission 
of  Hannibal.  The  young  Tiberius  derived  his  ideas  of  what 
he  ought  to  do  partly  from  a  Greek  rhetorician  and  from  a 
Greek  philosopher,  and  partly  from  what  he  saw  with  his 
own  eyes  and  learned  from  the  complaints  of  the  poor 
citizens.1  He  obtained  his  election  as  tribune  of  the  plebs 
in  the  summer  of  134,  and  soon  after  entering  on  his  office 
on  the  tenth  of  December  at  the  end  of  the  same  year,  he 
proposed  and  carried  a  law  designed  to  found  a  fresh  body 
of  Roman  farmers  as  numerous  as  the  farmers  had  been  a 
century  earlier.  The  general  effect  of  his  law  was  that  the 
rich  men,  who  had  usurped  public  domain  land  beyond  the 
amount  permitted  by  one  of  the  Licinian  Rogations  of 
367,  should  henceforth  be  allowed  to  keep  only  what  that 
Licinian  Rogation  allowed,  and  if  they  had  sons  an 
additional  amount  for  the  sons:  that  all  the  rest  of  the 
public  domain  land  in  their  occupation  should  be  restored 

1  Plutarch,  Tiberitis,  8,  9. 


chap,  xv.]  GRACCHUS  249 

to  the  Roman  people,  and  should  be  distributed  in  lots  of 
thirty  jugera  (a  little  more  than  twenty  acres),  as  heritable 
but  inalienable  leasehold  property  partly  to  Roman  citizens, 
and  partly  to  Italian  allies :  and  that  three  commissioners 
should  in  every  year  be  elected  by  the  people  to  superintend 
the  work  of  recovery  of  the  land  and  its  distribution.1 

When  the  law  was  proposed  by  Tiberius,  another  tribune, 
M.  Octavius,  interposed  his  veto.  Tiberius,  in  most  flagrant 
violation  of  Roman  practice,  got  his  colleague 
deposed  by  the  assembled  people,  and  the  law  proceedings 
was  passed:  but  when  in  the  summer  Tiberius  an  ea 
sought  to  be  elected  as  tribune  for  the  following  year,  he 
was  again  met  with  a  veto  by  some  of  the  tribunes,  and 
as  the  voters  present  were  mainly  the  irresolute  paupers  of 
the  city  and  not  sturdy  farmers  as  of  old,  he  had  no  means 
of  setting  it  aside.  Soon  afterwards  a  meeting  of  the 
senate  was  held  while  Tiberius  was  present  at  a  meeting 
of  the  people  close  at  hand:  a  mob  of  senators,  led  by 
Scipio  Nasica,  and  armed  with  clubs  or  with  legs  wrenched 
from  tables  in  the  market  place,  rushed  towards  the  Capitol 
to  attack  Tiberius,  and  did  not  desist  till  they  had  killed 
him  and  three  hundred  of  his  adherents.2 

After  the  death  of  Tiberius  the  work  of  his  commissioners 
was  carried  on ;  and  it  seems  from  comparison  of  the  totals 
of  two  census  rolls  that  they  gave  away  farms  to  . 
more  than  seventy  thousand  citizens,  and  so  Gracchus, 
enabled  them  to  be  placed  by  the  censors  among  I23'121  c- 
the  citizens  capable  of  bearing  arms.  But  shortly  after- 
wards the  commissioners  began  to  lay  their  hands  on  lands 
belonging  to  the  Latins:  Scipio  ^Emilianus,  seeing  the 
impolicy  of  their  action,  induced  the  senate  to  decree  that 

1  Most  of  the  provisions  enacted  by  Tiberius  are  clearly  stated  by  Appian 
{Civ.,  1.  9  and  10). 

2  Plutarch,  Tiberius,  19. 


250  GAIUS  [chap.  xv. 

in  future  the  consuls  and  not  the  commissioners  should 
decide  what  was  public  domain  land;  and  though  he  was 
promptly  murdered,  his  action  put  a  stop  to  the  distribution 
of  farms,  since  all  the  genuine  domain  land  had  been  given 
away.  In  123  Gaius  Gracchus,  brother  of  Tiberius,  but  his 
junior  by  ten  years,  sought  and  gained  election  as  tribune. 
He  certainly  intended  to  take  vengeance  on  the  curule 
families,  whom  we  may  now  call  the  Optimates,  for  the 
death  of  his  brother.  Whether  he  can  be  regarded  as  a 
continuer  of  his  brother's  work  is  much  more  doubtful. 
Tiberius  aided  the  poor  citizens  by  restoring  to  them  lands 
to  which  they  had  an  equitable  claim,  since  their  fathers 
had  won  them  in  fight.  All  the  favours  which  Gaius 
showered  on  two  classes  among  the  citizens  look  like  mere 
bribes,  intended  to  induce  them  to  help  him  in  his  attack 
on  the  Optimates ;  and  they  were  to  be  paid  for  the  most 
part  either  by  the  state  treasury  or  by  innocent  and 
oppressed  inhabitants  of  provinces.  His  boons  were  given 
to  the  proletariate  and  the  equites,  that  is,  practically,  to  all 
the  community  except  the  Optimates. 

The  chief  measures  that  Gaius  proposed  and  carried  were 

these.     To  win  the  favour  of  the  proletariate  he  enacted 

that  every  citizen  should  on  application  in  Rome 

Measures  »  . 

of  Gaius  be  supplied  every  month  with  a  fixed  quantity 
of  corn  at  about  half  the  ordinary  price,  and  that 
large  colonies  should  be  founded  in  Italy  and  at  Carthage, 
and  be  duly  endowed  with  lands.  To  gain  over  the  equites 
he  put  them  in  a  position  which  enabled  them  to  plunder 
provincial  subjects  of  Rome  at  their  ease.  In  Asia,  the 
latest  and  the  richest  of  the  provinces,  the  senate  had 
arranged  that  the  communities  should  pay  in  every  year  a 
fixed  and  moderate  sum  as  tribute  direct  to  Roman  officers. 
Gaius  enacted,  first,  that  the  Asiatic  provincials  should  pay 
tithes  from  tilled  land,  a  tax  called  scriptura  from  public 


chap,  xv.]  GRACCHUS  251 

pastures,  and  port  dues,  as  the  Sicilians  did  ; 1  secondly,  that 
the  right  to  collect  the  Asiatic  taxes  and  dues  should  be 
sold  by  public  auction  in  Rome,  so  that  the  companies  of 
equites  might  be  sure  to  be  able  to  purchase  it ; 2  and  thirdly, 
that  the  judges  in  judicia  populi  (important  criminal 
trials)  should  be  drawn  no  longer  as  heretofore  from  the 
senators  but  from  the  equites,  so  that  equites  would  give 
judgment  on  charges  of  extortion  in  the  collection  of  taxes 
in  the  provinces.3 

By  these  measures  Gaius  gained  great  political  influence. 
After  their  enactment,  or  while  they  were  only  promised,  he 
was,  in   violation   of    the   regular   practice,  re-   „ 

.  .  .      Comments 

elected  as  tribune  without  having  laid  down  his  on  the  aims 
office :  no  doubt  he  may  have  hoped  to  be  tribune  °  Gams- 
for  many  years  in  succession.  While  he  had  this  expecta- 
tion he  was  like  a  tyrant,  but  for  the  fact  that  he  had  no 
army :  a  tribune  could  not  have  a  military  force  under  him. 
It  does  not  appear  to  me  that  if  his  arbitrary  power  had  been 
of  long  duration  it  would  have  been  useful  to  the  world. 
The  oppressors  of  mankind  were  all  the  Romans  and  not 
only  the  curule  families  :  the  oppressed  were  the  provincials, 
the  Italians,  and  in  a  less  degree  the  Latins.  The  only 
kind  of  usurper  that  would  have  been  really  useful  would 
have  been  one  who  should  arise  as  military  commander  of 
the  provincials  and  the  Italians  and  lead  them  to  victory  in 
fair  fight  over  the  Romans. 

1  Appian,  B.  G. ,  5.  4,  makes  Antonius  say  in  public  at  Pergamum  to  the 
Asiatic  provincials,  dr}/j,oK6iroiv  dvdpwu  ical  irap  rjfuv  yevofiivuv  .  .  .  fi^prj  tpipeiv 
tQv  eK&crroTe  Kapirwu  ird^afiev  .  .  .  vfuv.  The  passage  is  printed  more  fully 
in  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  I1.  180,  n.  6. 

2  Cicero,  in  Verr.,  3.  6.  12,  '  ceteris  (provinciis)  aut  impositum  vectigal  est 
certum,  quod  stipendiarium  dicitur  .  .  .  aut'^censoria  locatio  constituta  est,  ut 
Asiae  lege  Sempronia.'  Fronto  cited  by  Marquardt,  l1.  180,  n.  6.  'Jam 
Gracchus  locabat  Asiam.' 

3  Smith,  Diet.  Ant.,  s.v.  Judex,  1.  1027.  Velleius  Pat.,  2.  6.  3,  ed.  Halm. 
1  (Gaius)  judicia  a  senatu  transferebat  ad  equites.'  Civil  suits  were  not 
touched  by  any  of  the  leges  Sempronioe. — Diet.  Ant.,  1.  10266  and  1027a. 


252  EFFECT  OF  THE  [chap.  xy. 

In  addition  to  the  measures  which  he  passed  Gaius  had  a 
project  of  giving  Roman  citizenship  to  all  the  Latins,  and 
Proposal  of  promoting  the  Italians  to  the  position  already 
Gaius  to         held  by  the  Latins ;  we  know  of  this  project  from 

give  citizen-  . .  .  .      .     ,         ,  , 

ship  to  the  a  manifesto  against  it  put  forth  by  the  consul 
Latins.  q    Fannius    Strabo.1      It    would    have    shown 

extreme  stupidity  in  Gaius  if  he  had  hoped  to  induce  the 
voters  in  the  assembly  to  diminish  the  shares  that  they 
each  got  in  the  perquisites  of  citizenship  by  alloAving  the 
Latins,  who  were  probably  at  least  as  numerous  as  the 
Romans,  to  take  their  proportion  of  them  without  giving 
the  old  voters  something  in  return :  hence  it  is  likely  that 
he  intended  that  the  Latins  should  relinquish  something  to 
the  Romans,  and  the  something  could  hardly  be  other  than 
the  domain  lands  that  the  Romans  had  allowed  the  Latins 
to  occupy. 

Whatever  was  the  inducement  offered  by  Gaius  to  the 
Roman  voters,  it  was  insufficient :  and  his  proposal  to  give 
Overthrow  Roman  citizenship  to  the  Latins,  when  it  was 
of  Gaius.  met  yrifa  the  tribunician  veto  of  M.  Livius 
Drusus,  who  acted  in  the  interest  of  the  curule  families,  did 
not  pass.  Then  Livius  Drusus,  prompted  by  the  curule 
families  who  controlled  the  senate,  undertook  to  outbid 
Gaius  by  offering  the  poor  voters  in  Rome  very  large  gains 
in  money  at  the  expense  of  the  treasury,  and  in  land  at  the 
expense  of  the  Latins  or  Italians,  without  any  counter- 
balancing disadvantages :  the  assembly  accepted  his  offer, 
and  when  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  122  elections  of 
tribunes  and  consuls  were  held,  Gaius  was  not  chosen  as  a 
tribune,  and  L.  Opimius,  a  resolute  champion  of  the  curule 
families,  was  elected  as  consul.  In  the  beginning  of  121, 
when  Gaius  was  no  longer  tribune  and  Opimius  had  entered 

1  Mommsen,  Hist.,  3.  124.  See  Smith,  Diet.  Biogr.,  'Strabo,'  3.  922,  for 
citation  of  authorities. 


chap,  xv.]  GKACCHAN  CHANGES  253 

on  possession  of  the  consular  imperium,  an  assembly  was 
held  on  the  Capitol  to  vote  about  a  proposal  to  repeal  a  law 
which  Gaius  had  passed  for  founding  a  colony  at  Carthage. 
Opimius  was  offering  the  usual  sacrifice  in  the  porch  of  the 
Capitoline  temple.  A  zealous  adherent  of  Gaius  fancied 
that  his  leader  was  in  danger  of  assault  and  hastily  murdered 
a  man  whom  he  suspected  of  meaning  to  hurt  him.  Hence 
followed  a  wild  tumult.  Next  day  the  Gracchan  party,  in 
desperation,  occupied  the  Aventine  Mount,  and  by  taking 
measures  to  defend  themselves  by  force  showed  themselves 
as  armed  insurgents.  In  the  suppression  of  their  rebellion 
Gaius  and  three  thousand  of  his  supporters  were  slain. 

Under  the  new  regulations  which  the  two  Gracchi  had 
succeeded  in  enacting  all  classes  in  the  Roman  community 
got  about  even  shares  in  the  plunder  of  distant  General 
provinces,  in  lands  which  earlier  generations  had  economic 
conquered  from  the  Italians  in  fair  fight,  and  in  Gracchan 
hopes  of  getting  other  lands  which  the  present  changes- 
generation  thought  of  seizing  from  the  Italians  by  un- 
provoked confiscation.  The  curule  families  kept  the 
command  of  the  armies  and  the  governorship  of  the 
provinces.  The  equites  had  the  collection  of  the  provincial 
revenues  in  Asia  and  probably  also  in  some  other  provinces, 
and  the  sole  right  of  sitting  as  judges  in  trials  for  extortion. 
Some  of  the  poor  had  been  provided  by  the  commissioners, 
whom  Tiberius  had  established,  with  farms  on  the  old 
domain  land  of  the  Romans,  and  had  gone  far  away  from 
Rome  to  try  to  gain  a  tolerable  livelihood  as  yeomen 
farmers;  others  had  been  offered  farms  by  Gaius  in  new 
colonies  to  be  founded  by  the  expropriation  of  Italian 
communities  and  of  the  remnant  of  the  Carthaginians,  but 
had  in  most  cases  preferred  to  remain  in  Rome :  and  lastly, 
both  those  who  had  declined  plots  of  ground  in  dis- 
advantageous localities  and  those  to  whom  no  plots  had 


254  RENEWED  RULE  [chap.  xv. 

been  offered  continued  to  live  in  and  around  Rome  as 
paupers  with  abundant  perquisites,  enjoying  the  amusement 
of  gladiatorial  shows,  and  subsisting  in  idleness  without 
much  difficulty  on  the  public  doles  of  corn  and  on  the 
money  that  they  received  from  the  rich  in  payment  for 
their  votes  in  the  assembly  of  the  people.  All  had  their 
share  of  enjoyment;  but  nearly  all  the  enjoyment  was  got 
by  merciless  oppression  of  defenceless  provincials  and  very 
little  by  honest  labour. 

As  the  yeomen  were  tied  to  their  farms  far  away  in  the 

country  there  was  no  large  mass  of  independent  and  un- 

corrupt  voters  in  the  assembly  of  the  tribes.     The 

predomin-       assembly  had  not  taken  the  trouble  to  save  the 

anceofthe      lives  of  its  champions,  the  Gracchi,  when  a  vote 

curule  .  L 

families,  for    their    re-election   as   tribunes   would   have 

121  "*£"  sufficed : x  probably  a  quantity  of  the  pauper 
citizens  were  paid  to  vote  the  other  way.  As 
the  assembly  could  not  be  trusted  to  vote  steadily  for  any 
purpose,  no  tribune  after  the  two  Gracchi  rose  to  formidable 
influence,  and  in  the  absence  of  strong  tribunician  opposi- 
tion the  rich  classes  could  do  as  they  liked.  The  equites 
were  quite  content  to  gather  in  their  share  of  the  plunder 
of  the  provinces  without  troubling  themselves  about 
meddling  much  in  politics,  and  therefore  the  other  rich 
class,  the  curule  families,  were  able  until  106,  when  a  new 
antagonist  arose  who  was  not  a  tribune,  to  conduct  the 
government  as  they  pleased,  subject  to  the  sole  limitation 
that  the  distribution  of  the  spoils  of  foreign  lands  was  not 
to  be  altered.  They  consigned  the  laws  which  Drusus  had 
got  passed  at  their  bidding,  with  one  exception,  to  oblivion : 
they  only  retained  his  enactment  that  the  farms  already 
given  away  under  the  Gracchan  laws  should  no  longer  be 
held  from  the  state  on  inalienable  lease  subject  to  a  quit 

1  See  pages  249,  252. 


chap,  xv.]  OF  THE  CURULE  FAMILIES  255 

rent,  but  should  henceforth  be  owned  by  their  occupants  in 
fee  simple  free  from  rent  and  from  restriction  in  regard  to 
alienation.1  The  farmers  thus  became  free  to  sell  and  the 
rich  to  buy;  and  it  is  probable  that  part  at  least  of  the 
farmers  turned  their  lands  into  money  and  went  back  to 
Rome.  If  they  did,  they  added  no  element  of  stability  to 
the  popular  assembly.  Till  the  time  of  Tiberius  they  had 
been  habitual  urban  idlers :  when  they  came  back  they  were 
only  men  who  had  tried  farming  for  a  few  years  without 
success,  and  on  their  return  to  Rome  they  were  necessarily 
without  any  regular  employment. 

In  the  dealings  of  the  curule  families  with  Italian  affairs 
there  was  much  folly  but  no  flagrant  misconduct.  When, 
however,  a  question  of  external  policy  arose,  .  . 
individual  members  of  the  nobility  showed  that  118  B.c- 
for  their  private  gain  they  were  ready  to  betray 
the  interests,  not  only  of  the  Romans  in  general,  but  even  of 
their  own  order.  In  Numidia,  which  since  201  had  been  a 
vassal  state,  Jugurtha,  a  bastard  son  of  a  son  of  Massinissa, 
tried  in  118  to  rob  two  of  his  cousins  of  their  kingly  dignity. 
As  the  cousins  were  under  Roman  protection,  it  was  the  duty 
of  the  Roman  senate  to  intervene  without  delay :  but 
Jugurtha  by  giving  large  bribes  to  senators,  to  envoys,  and 
to  commissioners  staved  off  the  day  of  reckoning  for  six 
years.  At  the  end,  however,  of  the  six  years,  in  112,  it 
became  impossible  for  any  Roman  to  doubt  that  his 
ambition  was  dangerous  to  Roman  interests  in  the  province 
of  Africa.  He  had  murdered  his  cousin  Hiempsal.  The 
almost  impregnable  stronghold  of  Cirta,  the  modern 
Constantine,  belonged  to  his  remaining  cousin  Adherbal: 
Jugurtha  besieged  it,  but  found  it  so  strongly  defended  by 
Italian  commercial  dealers  settled  there  that  he  could  not 
take  it  by  force.     The  Italian  defenders  of  the  place  very 

1  Mommsen,  Hist.,  3.  124.     Diet.  Biogr.,  s.v.  '  Drusus,'  vol.  1,  p.  1078a. 


256  WAR  AGAINST  [chap.  xv. 

foolishly  advised  Adherbal  to  surrender  the  place  to 
Jugurtha,  trusting  that  the  Roman  commonwealth  would 
see  to  it  that  they  did  not  suffer.  Jugurtha  murdered  them 
all,  and  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  appropriated  all  that 
had  belonged  to  them.1 

The  massacre  at  Cirta,  and  the  robbery  that  followed  it, 

roused  the  indignation  not  only  of  the  equites,  who  had  no 

doubt  lost  property,  but   even  of  the   corrupt 

War  against  .  . 

jug-urtha,  popular  assembly  at  Rome.  The  curule  families 
in  B.C.-  did  not  dare  any  longer  to  refuse  to  send  an  army 
Futile  to  Africa.     But  in  111  Jugurtha  purchased  con- 

operations,  tinued  possession  of  all  the  territory  he  had 
111-109.  r  J 

seized:  and  in  110  he  compelled  a  Roman  army 

to  pass  under  the  yoke  and  to  leave  him  reigning  over  all 
Numidia. 

The  senate  saw  that  in  109  the  war  against  Jugurtha 
must  be  waged  seriously.  They  gave  the  chief  command  to 
Serious  war  Q-  Metellus,  who  belonged  to  one  of  the  most 
against  distinguished  curule  families.  -  The  new  com- 

109' B.C.-  mander  was  honest  and  capable,  but  his  successes 
105  b.  c.  came  slowly,  because  he  found  his  army  in  terrible 
disorder.  The  most  capable  of  the  officers  serving  under 
him  was  Gaius  Marius,  a  man  with  no  curule  ancestors,  but 
full  of  desire  to  rise  to  high  command.  In  108  Marius,  who 
had  already  been  praetor  seven  years  earlier,  and  had  as 
propraetor  been  a  vigorous  governor  of  Further  Spain,  asked 
leave  of  absence  from  his  duties  in  Africa  for  the  purpose  of 
going  to  Rome  as  a  candidate  for  the  consulship,  but  was 
put  off  with  excuses  and,  as  some  said,  with  contemptuous 
sarcasm  by  Metellus,  who  honestly  believed  that  no  novus 
homo  could  aspire  to  rise  above  praetorian  rank  without 
indecent  presumption.2    Thereupon  he  sought  to  win  the 

1  Sallust,  Bell.  Jug.,  26. 

2  Ibid.,  63,  64.     Diet.  Biogr.,  b.v.  '  Mariua.' 


chap,  xv.]  JUGURTHA  257 

favour  of  his  soldiers  with  indulgences,  and  to  talk  about 
the  slowness  and  arrogance  of  Metellus,  and  of  his  own 
capacity  for  making  a  speedy  end  of  Jugurtha.  The  men 
to  whom  he  spoke  in  this  strain  were  Italian  dealers,  who 
lived  in  great  numbers  at  Utica  in  the  province  of  Africa ; 
Gauda,  a  half  brother  of  Jugurtha ;  and  any  Roman  equites 
or  soldiers  who  would  listen  to  him :  to  all  of  them  he  gave 
directions  that  they  should  write  to  any  friends  whom  they 
might  have  in  Rome,  and  repeat  what  he  said.1  Twelve 
days  before  the  comitia  for  the  election  of  consuls  he 
obtained  leave  of  absence.  By  travelling  as  fast  as  possible, 
and  through  good  luck  in  getting  a  favourable  wind,  he 
arrived  in  time  to  be  a  candidate :  and  when  the  votes  were 
given  he  was  elected.  Shortly  afterwards  a  concilium 
plebis,  usurping  powers  which  ordinarily  belonged  to  the 
senate,  resolved  that  in  the  following  year  Marius,  not 
Metellus,  should  be  commander  in  the  war  against 
Jugurtha.2 

The  new  consul  in  levying  a  fresh  army  for  Africa  intro- 
duced an  important  innovation  by  allowing  the  poorest  of 
the  citizens,  if  they  were  strong  enough  to  serve, 
to  enrol  themselves  in  the  legions,  from  which  p00r  citizens 
they  had  hitherto  been  excluded :  admission  to   in  the  army> 

"  107  B.C. 

the  army  was  welcome  to  a  great  number  of 
Roman  paupers,  because  they  hoped  to  enrich  themselves 
by  plunder.3  In  107  and  106  Marius,  greatly  aided  by 
L.  Sulla,  who  held  a  command  of  cavalry  under  him, 
succeeded  in  securing  the  surrender  of  Jugurtha.  Numidia 
was  divided  into  two  parts:  the  western  portion,  about 
co-extensive  with  what  is  now  Algeria  proper,  became  the 
Roman  province  of  Numidia ;  the  eastern  part,  about  Cirta, 
was  given  to  Gauda. 

1  Sallust,  Bell.  Jug.,  64.  2  Ibid.,  64,  65,  73. 

"  Ibid.,  86.  2  and  3  and  84.  4. 

R 


258  GREAT  ARMY  [chap.  xv. 

PERIOD  III.   SERIOUS  EXTERNAL  WAR  AND  CREATION  OF  A 
GREAT  MERCENARY  ARMY,  106  B.C.-91  B.C. 

While  the  paltry  war  with  Jugurtha  was  running  its 
course,  Rome  and  Italy  were  threatened  by  enemies  as 
formidable  as  the  Gauls  under  Brennus  or  the  Carthaginians 
under  Hannibal.  The  Cimbri  and  the  Teutones,  two 
migratory  peoples,  starting  probably  from  the  heart  of 
Germany,  moved  southward,  and  on  their  way  were  joined 
by  adherents  from  other  stocks.  In  the  eastern  Alps  and 
in  Gaul  they  inflicted  defeats  on  Roman  generals :  on  the 
lower  Rhone  in  106,  probably  near  Arausio,  the  modern 
Orange,  they  won  a  battle  in  which,  through  the  gross 
insubordination  of  Csepio,  the  Roman  second  in  command, 
an  army  said  to  have  numbered  eighty  thousand  men 
of  the  Romans  and  their  allies  was  completely  cut  to 
pieces. 

The  Romans  in  their  dismay  thought  it  necessary  to 
elect  Marius  as  consul  in  many  consecutive  years,  though 
Remodelling:  ^ne  law  forbade  them  to  do  it.  Marius,  put- 
of  the  Roman  ting  all  the  fighting  strength  of  Italy  under 
arms,  made  a  new  army,  and  organised  it  on  a 
new  model :  he  attended  solely  to  the  object  of  creating 
a  strong  fighting  body,  and,  disregarding  the  civic 
antecedents  and  status  of  his  recruits,  gave  every  soldier, 
whether  Roman  or  Italian,  whether  landowner  or  pauper, 
an  equal  chance  of  winning  distinction  and  promotion. 
When  he  had  defeated  the  enemy  at  Aix  near  Mar- 
seilles, and  again  near  Vercelli,  between  the  Alps  and  the 
Po,  and  had  disbanded  his  army,  Italy  was  filled  with 
veterans  out  of  employ  whose  life's  work  was  fighting,  and 
who  knew  not  what  to  do  when  they  were  not  under 
arms. 


chap,  xv.]  OF  MERCENARIES  259 

PERIOD  IV.      REVOLT  OF  THE   ITALIAN   ALLIES,  91   B.C.-89  B.C. 

As  the  Latin  and  Italian  allies  had  for  three  generations 
furnished  twice  as  many  soldiers  as  the  Romans,  it  was 
inevitable  that  at  some  time  they  would  draw  conclusions 
from  their  numerical  superiority.  The  time  came  during 
the  war  against  the  Cimbri  and  the  Teutones,  perhaps  all 
the  more  certainly  because  a  great  part  of  the  Romans  who 
fought  in  that  war  had  been  paupers  before  they  entered 
the  army.  The  allies  had  long  desired  to  be  made  Roman 
citizens,  in  order  to  get  a  share  of  the  spoils  of  the  provinces 
and  more  merciful  conditions  of  military  service  :  when  the 
Cimbri  and  Teutones  had  been  defeated  mainly  by  their 
exertions,  they  hoped  that  their  desire  might  be  gratified. 
Two  vain  attempts  to  grant  what  they  asked  by  legislative 
enactment  were  made  in  Rome:  one  by  a  demagogue 
Saturninus,  the  other  by  M.  Livius  Drusus,  a  statesman  of 
wide  views,  and  son  of  the  Drusus  who  had  outbidden  Gaius 
Gracchus  in  promises  to  the  proletariate.  When  these 
attempts  had  failed  and  their  authors  had  been  killed,  a 
good  part  of  the  Italian  communities  in  91  B.C.  chose 
generals  from  among  their  townsmen,  and  began  a  war  for 
the  destruction  of  Rome.  Although  all  factions  of  Roman 
citizens  exerted  themselves  in  defence  of  their  profits  from 
the  provinces,  and  although  the  Latins  generally  stood  by 
Rome,  the  Romans  made  no  progress  in  the  war  till  in 
90  B.C.  the  consul  L.  Csesar  passed  his  Lex  Julia  giving  full 
Roman  citizenship  to  all  those  allies  who  had  not  revolted 
or  who  speedily  submitted.  Though  the  Lex  Julia  did  not 
place  the  Italians  on  an  equality  in  voting  power  with  the 
Romans,  since  it  gave  them  admission  only  to  eight  tribes 
and  not  to  all  the  tribes,  it  sufficed  for  its  purpose,  and  by 
the  end  of  the  year  89  the  continued  existence  of  the 
Roman  commonwealth  was  assured. 


260  ARMIES  [chap.  xv. 

PERIOD   V.      PREDOMINANCE   OF   ARMIES,   88   B.C.-46   B.C. 

The  little  governing  community  of  Rome,  which  consisted 
of  those  Romans  who  lived  in  Rome  or  near  at  hand,  got 
rid  of  the  danger  with  which  the  Italians  had  threatened  it 
by  passing  the  Lex  Julia ;  but  it  soon  found  that  its  own 
armies,  consisting  mainly  of  new  citizens  from  outlying  parts 
of  Italy,  and  its  own  generals,  were  not  less  likely  than 
the  Italians  in  their  revolt  had  been  to  deprive  it  of  the 
supremacy  over  the  civilised  world  which  it  claimed  and 
had  hitherto  enjoyed.  From  88  B.C.  to  46  B.C.  it  was 
constantly  in  fear  of  being  suppressed  by  some  one  of  its 
own  armies  under  a  victorious  general :  but  it  was  able 
during  that  period  of  forty  two  years  to  maintain  a 
semblance  of  power,  because  its  generals  and  its  armies  were 
many,  and  they  engaged  in  rivalry  with  one  another  on 
such  even  terms  that  no  one  general  and  no  one  army  for 
any  long  time  had  exclusive  possession  of  the  mastery. 

The  strife  between  armies  and  generals    need  not  be 

described  in  detail.    From  88  to  82  there  was  a  question  of 

politics  in  which  the  soldiers  felt  interest.     The 

Wars  r  . 

between         men  in  the  armies  in  88  were  divided  into  old 
generals  and    cjtjzens   new  citizens  under  the  Lex  Julia,  and 

armies,  '  #  ' 

88  B.C.-         Italians  who  were  not  citizens.     The  old  citizens 

82  B  C 

desired  to  keep  their  privileges  of  citizenship  to 
themselves :  the  others  desired  to  share  them.  The  most 
valued  privilege  of  a  citizen  who  could  often  be  present  in 
Rome  was  the  power  to  give  an  effective  vote  in  the  popular 
assembly.  That  privilege  had  not  been  of  much  value  to  a 
majority  of  the  yeomen  of  old  time,  because  when  they 
were  disbanded  at  the  end  of  a  campaign  they  went  straight 
away  to  their  farms  at  a  distance  from  Rome :  to  the 
mercenary  soldiers  in  88  and  afterwards  it  was  likely  to  be 
profitable,  because  when  they  were  not  on  active  service 


chap,  xv.]  AT  STRIFE  261 

they  would  drift  to  Rome.  Under  the  Lex  Julia  the  new 
citizens  were  excluded  from  giving  votes  of  much  efficacy 
because  they  were  all  placed  in  only  eight  tribes  out  of  the 
thirty  five.  In  the  course  of  six  years  of  wars  between 
generals  and  armies  from  88  to  82,  Marius,  Cinna,  and  Carbo 
were  the  champions  of  the  new  citizens ;  Sulla  of  the  old. 
In  84  Cinna,  being  for  the  time  master  of  Italy,  commanded 
the  senate  and  the  assembly  to  decide  that  the  new  citizens 
should  be  placed  in  all  the  tribes  indiscriminately,  so  that 
they  might  have  the  same  voting  power  as  the  old  citizens : 
and  Sulla,  though  on  his  return  from  Asia  Minor  in  82  he 
brought  his  legions  into  Rome  and  ruled  for  a  while  as  a 
conqueror,  thought  it  necessary  to  leave  the  new  citizens  to 
enjoy  the  power  that  Cinna  had  given  them.  From  82  B.C. 
almost  every  free  born  inhabitant  of  Italy  was  able,  when 
present  in  Rome,  to  give  an  effective  vote  in  the  popular 
assembly. 

In  82  B.C.  Sulla  became  absolute  master  of  Rome  and 
Italy  and  the  provinces.     He  took  the  title  of  dictator,  and 
kept  his  unlimited  power  for  two  years.     In  his 
first  six  months  he  got  rid  of  all  men  likely  to   atorship, 
stand  in  his  way  by  the  method  of  proscriptions   82B-C.- 
or  authorised  assassinations.     Marius,  a  few  years 
before,  had  attained  the  same  end  more  speedily,  and  probably 
with  much  greater  bloodshed,  by  turning  his  soldiers  loose 
into  Rome  to  slay  and  rob  at  their  pleasure.     As  destroyers 
of  their  opponents  Marius  and  Sulla  were  on  a  par:  but 
Sulla  was  a   statesman  and  Marius  was  not.     Marius  had 
never  tried  to  provide  for  the  future  welfare  of  his  country- 
men:  Sulla  made  an  honest   and   courageous  attempt  to 
secure  the  inhabitants  of  Italy  against  the  recurrence  of 
such  miseries  as  they  had  recently  experienced. 

Before  I  can  describe  the  changes  made  by  Sulla  in  the 
government  of  the  Italians,  it  is  necessary  to  explain  how 


262  SULLAN  [chap.  xv. 

they  were  governed  in  82  B.C.,  when  Sulla  became  their 
master.  The  four  forces  in  the  community  other  than  Sulla 
Th  overn-  himself  were  the  senate,  the  generals,  the 
ment  of  Italy,  tribunes,  and  the  popular  assembly.  The  popular 
assembly,  under  the  law  passed  by  Cinna  in  84 
and  confirmed  by  Sulla  two  years  later,  no  longer  consisted 
of  a  few  scores  of  thousands  of  urban  paupers  but  of  all  the 
free  population  of  Italy :  the  only  men,  however,  from  out- 
lying districts,  who  were  likely  to  attend  its  meetings  and 
legislate  for  the  civilised  world,  were  those  who  had  no 
employment  that  tied  them  to  their  homes,  and  were  ac- 
customed to  the  life  of  mercenary  soldiers.  Thus  for  the 
future  the  popular  assembly,  which  still  claimed  to  be 
sovereign  ruler  of  the  world,  was  likely  to  vote  sometimes 
for  the  advantage  of  the  paupers  and  sometimes  for 
the  interest  of  the  mercenary  soldiers  and  their  generals, 
but  never  for  the  interest  of  any  other  class.  The  generals 
were  the  most  dangerous  class  in  the  community,  because 
they  were  likely  to  fight  against  one  another  and  overturn 
all  government:  next  to  them  in  capacity  for  mischief 
came  the  tribunes,  who  might  propose  revolutionary 
measures  in  the  assembly  and  might  be  influenced  by 
ambitious  generals.  \  ae  senate,  the  only  remaining  force  in 
the  community,  was  selfish  and  corrupt,  but  it  might  be  con- 
stituted on  a  new  footing  i  above  all,  it  had  one  great  merit  : 
it  was  a  body  of  civilians,  and  for  the  preservation  of  such 
influence  as  it  possessed  it  was  certain  to  be  an  opponent  of 
any  general  who  might  try  to  become  omnipotent.  Sulla 
decided  to  diminish  the  opportunities  of  generals  and  tribunes 
and  popular  assembly  for  interfering  in  government,  and  to 
entrust  as  much  authority  as  he  could  to  a  reformed  senate. 
Of  the  generals  it  is  to  be  noted  that  for  thirty  years 
after  Sulla's  time  they  rarely  had  any  armies  in  Italy 
except  when  they  were  levying  new  legions  or  disbanding 


chap,  xv.]  CONSTITUTION  263 

veterans.     It  seems  likely  that  the  immunity  of  Italy  from 

prolonged  molestation  by  armed  forces  was  not  due  to  any 

explicit   regulation    made   by    Sulla:    no    such   The  Italian 

regulation   is   recorded,   and   if  any   had   been   community 

made,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any   bySuiia, 

powerful  general  after  Sulla's  time  would  have  **  BC-_ 
.  .  .  .70  B.C. 

obeyed  it.     There  is  more  to  be  said  for  the  view   \%)  The 

that  before  Sulla's  time  a  large  majority  of  the  £enerals- 
inhabitants  of  Italy  wished  to  have  no  armed  forces  in  their 
country,  and  that  after  his  time  the  generals  thought  it 
prudent  to  respect  their  wishes.  Italy  was  still  the  sole 
recruiting  ground  of  all  the  legionaries,  and  no  general 
wishes  to  cause  annoyance  to  the  settled  inhabitants  from 
whose  surplus  population  recruits  have  to  be  levied.  Sulla, 
it  may  be  observed,  made  it  much  more  certain  than  it  had 
been  that  the  wishes  of  the  inhabitants  of  Italy  would 
receive  attention  from  the  generals.  He  settled  a  very 
large  number  of  his  veterans  on  lands  that  he  had  seized 
from  Italian  communities  which  had  fought  against  him : 
one  historian  says  that  twenty  three  legions  containing  per- 
haps a  hundred  thousand  men,  after  the  losses  sustained 
during  a  long  war  in  Asia  Minor,  were  thus  endowed  with 
freehold  property :  another  less  probably  makes  the  number 
double  as  large.1  All  these  men  had  gained  all  that  was 
to  be  got  out  of  campaigning,  and  desired  to  be  let  alone, 
and  to  live  as  civilians.  During  the  thirty  years  after  Sulla's 
time  the  consuls  during  their  year  of  office  stayed  in  Italy 
usually  as  purely  civilian  officers,  occupied  in  dealings  with 
the  senate  and  the  resident  citizens,  who  were  also  civilians : 
their  military  activity  did  not  begin  till  the  next  year  when 
they  went  abroad  as  proconsuls.2 

1  Appian,  B.C.,  1.  100.     Livy,  EpiL,  89. 

-  Mommsen,  Hist.,  3.  367,  draws  attention  to  the  general  freedom  of  Italy 
from  the  presence  of  armies  in  the  generation  after  Sulla. 


264  SULLAN  CONSTITUTION  [chap.  xv. 

The   tribunes    could    easily  perceive   that    the    popular 
assembly,  strengthened  as  it  was  by  the  admission  of  the 
Italians  to  the  full  rights  of  citizenship,  would  be 
and  (3)  the      a  serviceable  instrument  for  giving  effect  to  any 
paupers.  revolutionary  proposals  that  they  could  induce 

it  to  approve ;  and  they  were  likely  to  use  the  instrument 
that  was  ready  to  their  hands.  Sulla  daunted  ambitious  men 
who  might  aspire  to  become  tribunes  by  ordaining  that  if 
a  man  had  once  been  tribune  he  should  be  disqualified  for 
life  from  holding  any  other  magistracy : x  and  it  is  extremely 
probable  that  he  also  forbade  the  tribunes  to  bring  any 
rogatio  before  the  assembly  till  it  had  been  approved  by  the 
senate.2  When  he  had  made  the  tribunes  powerless,  he 
could  afford  to  deal  courageously  with  the  paupers  of  the 
city :  he  either  abolished  the  corn  doles  entirely  or  greatly 
diminished  their  amount. 

The  body  to  which  Sulla  entrusted  the  chief  authority  in 
his  commonwealth  was  a  senate  so  greatly  altered  that  it 
(4)  The  Dore  little  resemblance  to  the  senate  which  the 

senate.  Romans  knew  and  in  general  disliked.     Forty 

years  before  Sulla's  time  the  senate  had  been  dominated  by 
the  curule  families,  and  their  persistent  influence  had  been 
even  more  mischievous  than  the  transient  attempts  of  the 
tribunes  and  the  paupers  to  bring  about  revolutions.  By 
Sulla's  time  the  ranks  of  the  Optimates  had  been  thinned 
by  wars  and  murders,  as  the  ranks  of  the  English  baronage 
were  thinned  in  the  Wars  of  the  Hoses,  and  they  were  no 
longer  formidable.  Sulla  took  precautions  against  their 
return  to  power  by  founding  a  reformed  senate.  He 
ordered  the  popular  assembly  to  elect  three  hundred  new 
senators  immediately,  and  arranged  that  in  future  twenty 
quaestors  should  be  elected  in  every  year,  and  should  be- 
come senators  at  once,  and  should  remain  senators  for  life. 

1  Appian,  B.C.,  1.  100.  a  Mommsen,  Hist.,  3.  364  note. 


chap,  xv.]  IMPROVED  JUDICATURE  265 

The  senate  thus  became  a  purely  elective  body :  but  the 
senators  when  once  elected  were  independent  of  their 
electors,  and  in  the  course  of  years  had  opportunies  of 
gaining  experience. 

The  greatest  work  of  Sulla  was  his  new  constitution,  but 
it  was  not  his  only  work.     He  also  made  great  improvements 
in  criminal  judicature   by  establishing  several   Improve. 
permanent  tribunals,  called  qucestiones  perpetuce,   ments  in 
which  for   the  first   time   provided   convenient  judicature 
machinery  for    the   trial    of    such    offences  as   and  the  law 

...  ,    of  property 

murder,  arson,  poisoning,  perjury,   forgery,  and   before 

corruption  of  judges.     It  happened  also  that  for  f? BC" 

several    generations    before    Sulla's    time    many    Roman 

magistrates  and   citizens  had   applied   themselves   to   the 

excellent  work   of  mending  and    simplifying   the   law   of 

property.     The  prsetors  who  superintended  suits  to  which 

Latins  or  Italians  or  other  aliens  were  parties  continued  to 

improve  their  edicts  by  inserting  in  them  maxims  derived 

from  systems  of  law  not  made  in  Rome : 1  in  so  far  as  this 

was  done  by  borrowing  from  Latin   or  Italian  systems  of 

law,  the  work  must  have  been  completed  by  82  B.C.,  because 

after  that  year  there  was  only  one  law  for  all  peoples  in 

Italy.     The  law  embodied  in  the  edicts  of  the  prcetores  qui 

jus  inter  peregrinos  dicebant  was  known  as  the  jus  gentium, 

or  law  common  to  many  peoples.     Moreover,  while  the  jus 

gentium  was  being  fashioned,  some  distinguished  Romans, 

especially  three  Mucii  Scsevolse,  made  a  scientific  study  of 

the  indigenous  Roman  law  of  property,  the  jus  civile,  founded 

on  the  law  of  the  twelve  tables :  the  third  of  the  Scsevolse, 

who  was  killed  by  the  Marian  faction  in  82,  was  the  first 

Roman  who  wrote  a  treatise  on  the  jus  civile.     As  the  jus 

civile  and  the  jus  gentium  existed  side  by  side  they  were 

compared:  the  jus  gentium  excelled  its  rival  in  simplicity 

1  See  pages  234-236. 


266  EFFECT  OF  THE  SULLAN  [chap.  xv. 

and  it  is  probable  that  many  of  its  rules  were  gradually 
adopted  into  the  law  applicable  to  the  property  of  Roman 
citizens. 

Under  Sulla's  regulations  all  free  men  in  Italy  were  made 

as  nearly  equal  as  the  existing  conditions  allowed,  and  were 

as  far  as  possible  formed  into  one  community. 

General  m.  ..  .  .  ,  .     . 

effect  of  J-hey  did  not  govern  themselves,  it  is  true,  nor 

Sulla's  ^id  tney  q]i  tak e  part  in  electing  their  governors : 

but  their  governors  were  a  senate  of  civilians 
who  by  long  experience  were  likely  to  gain  skill  in  governing. 
The  constitution  framed  by  Sulla  gave  for  the  time  being 
such  a  measure  of  general  satisfaction  that  at  the  end  of 
80  B.C.,  after  two  years  of  unlimited  power,  its  author  could 
venture  without  fear  of  murder  or  revolution  to  lay  down  all 
his  authority  and  retire  to  his  villa  near  Cumae,  where 
hunting  and  fishing  served  to  amuse  him  for  the  remaining 
two  years  of  his  life. 

Sulla's  regulations,  however,  could  not  long  avail  to  keep 
armies  out  of  Italy.     The  Roman  community,  which  now 

included  the  mass  of  the  inhabitants  of  all  Italy 

Impossibility  .         .  „  -    _,     _  .  . 

of  excluding  except  the  valley  of  the  ro,  was  quite  as  much 
armies  from     determined  to  drain  tribute  and  other  wealth  out 

Italy. 

of  the  provinces  as  the  smaller  Roman  community 
had  been  in  the  days  before  the  Lex  Julia.  Tribute  and 
wealth  could  not  be  collected  in  abundance  from  the 
provinces  unless  the  provinces  were  kept  in  subjection  by 
large  Roman  armies.  Generals  while  they  were  command- 
ing armies  in  the  provinces  could  not  be  controlled  by  the 
government  at  Rome,  nor  could  they  be  restrained  from 
bringing  back  their  armies  to  Italy  when  their  work  in  the 
provinces  was  finished.  Besides  all  this,  it  chanced  in 
73  b.c.  that  an  army  was  needed  in  Italy  itself  to  quell 
the  formidable  insurrection  of  the  gladiators  under 
Spartacus. 


chap,  xv.]  EEGULATIONS  267 

Among  the  great  dependencies  beyond  the  seas  those  that 
first  needed  occupation  by  strong  armies  to  make  them  profit- 
able were  Asia  Minor  and  Spain.    Asia  Minor  was   _  . 
imperilled  by  the  ambition  of  Mithradates,  King  predomin- 
of   Pontus,  and   the  Spaniards   were   trying  to   JJjJJesand 
become   independent    under   the   leadership   of  generals, 
Sertorius,   a   Roman    general    of   great    ability 
who  had   been  attached   to  the  faction  of  Marius.     The 
armies  of  the  Romans  were  commanded  in  Asia  by  Lucius 
Lucullus,  and  in  Spain  from  77  to  71  by  Gnseus  Pompeius, 
a  young  officer  who  had  never  been  elected  to  a  magistracy, 
but  who  had  in  the  year  82  been  most  helpful  to  Sulla  in 
his  contest  with  Carbo.     The  war  was  ended  in  Spain  sooner 
than  in  Asia,  and  at  the  end  of  71  Pompeius  came  back  to 
Italy  at  the  head  of  his  army.     He  found  another  army 
already  in  Italy  under  M.  Crassus  who  had  recently  over- 
powered the  gladiators  under  Spartacus.     The  senate,  which 
Sulla  had  intended  to  be  the  supreme  authority  over  Italy 
and  its  dependencies,  was  unable  to  control  either  Pompeius 
or  Crassus,  and  thus  the  predominance  of  generals  and  armies 
in  Italy  was  renewed. 

It  chanced  that  neither  Pompeius  nor  Crassus  desired  to 
become  a  despot  in  Italy.  Crassus  was  proud  of  his  great 
wealth,  and,  in  order  to  keep  enough  leisure  to 

.     ,  ,  ,  .  .  ..  Destruction 

increase  it  by  speculation  and  by  superintending  0f  the  Suiian 
the  work  done  by  his  slaves,  avoided  any  political  constitution, 
position  that  would  occupy  all  his  attention. 
Pompeius  sought  only  glorification  for  his  past  provincial 
exploits  and  an  opportunity  of  repeating  them.  The  grati- 
fications which  he  demanded  at  the  moment  were  a  triumph 
for  his  victories  in  Spain,  and  the  consulship  for  next  year  ; 
but  neither  of  his  requirements  could  be  granted  without 
a  breach  of  the  constitution,  which  ordained  that  no  man 
could  celebrate  a  triumph  unless  he  were  a  magistrate,  and 


268  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  [chap.  xv. 

none  could  bo  elected  as  consul  till  he  had  held  some  lesser 
magistracies.  So  Pompeius  needed  to  be  dispensed  either 
by  the  senate  or  by  the  popular  assembly  from  obedience 
to  the  established  rules.  The  senate  did  not  at  once  grant 
the  required  dispensations :  but  some  of  the  tribunes  were 
quite  willing  to  undertake  to  obtain  them  from  the  popular 
assembly  on  condition  that  Pompeius  and  his  army  would 
overawe  the  senate  into  restoring  to  the  tribunes  and  to 
the  popular  assembly  the  powers  of  which  Sulla  had 
deprived  them.  Pompeius  accepted  the  conditions,  and 
the  Sullan  constitution  was  destroyed  by  the  votes  of  the 
burgesses,  supported  in  the  near  distance  by  the  legions  of 
Pompeius.  The  tribunes  recovered  their  freedom  to  propose 
any  rogation  that  pleased  them  :  the  paupers  regained  their 
prodigal  corn  doles :  the  right  of  judging  in  criminal  trials 
was  shared  between  senators,  equites,  and  a  body  of  men 
called  tribuni  aerarii,  who  nearly  resembled  the  equites,  but 
for  the  fact  that  they  need  not  be  resident  in  Rome.1  In 
semblance  the  rules  of  the  constitution  reverted  nearly 
to  what  they  had  been  made  by  Gaius  Gracchus.  But  now 
there  was  no  strong  civilian  authority  presiding  over  the 
Roman  commonwealth.  The  senate  was  the  only  body  that 
tried  to  govern  in  the  interest  of  civilians  throughout  Italy, 
and  it  was  too  weak  to  do  what  it  attempted:  for  any 
victorious  general  was  likely  henceforth  to  be  supported 
not  only  by  his  own  army  but  also  by  the  tribunes  and 
the  popular  assembly. 

Yet  for  twenty  four  years  after  70  B.C.  generals  and 
armies  either  in  existence  or  in  near  prospect  were  many, 
and  they  kept  one  another  in  check,  so  that  none  of  them 
ventured  to  deprive  the  senate  of  its  semblance  of  power. 
Pompeius  in  67  and  66  employed  two  tribunes,  Gabinius 
and  Manilius,  to  obtain  from  the  popular  assembly  votes 

1  Smith,  Diet.  Antiq.,  vol.  2,  p.  871. 


chap,  xv.]  SULLAN  CONSTITUTION  269 

which  made  him  proconsul  with  absolutely  unlimited 
command  over  the  whole  Mediterranean  Sea  and  in  nearly 
all  the  provinces  that  belonged  to  Rome.     In   „ 

1  °  Pompeius 

five  years    he   conquered   all   Asia   Minor  and   not  a 
Syria,  but  on  coming  back  to  Italy  at  the  end   faSc* 
of   62    he    disbanded   his    army,    and  did   not  power, 
attempt  to  deprive  the  senate  and  the  popular 
assembly  of  such  shadow  of  authority  as  they  enjoyed.     The 
reasons  for  his  action  are  not  explained  by  ancient  historians ; 
but  we  can  see  that,  if  he  had  tried  to  be  despot  at  Rome,  he 
would  have  undertaken  a  task  of  attention  to  matters  of 
government  which  he  did  not  like,  and  could  not  be  sure 
that,  while  he  was  tied  to  his  work  in  Rome,  other  armies 
under  other  generals  might  not  arise  somewhere  in  the 
provinces  and  thence  come  back  to  Italy  and  overpower 
him. 

Pompeius  made  a  stupid  blunder  when  at  the  end  of  62 
he  disbanded  his  army  without  obtaining  from  the  senate 
all  such  decrees  as  he  desired.     The  things  that   Helpless 
he  needed  to  obtain  from  the  senate  were  three :  position  of 
confirmation  of  all  the  orders  he  had  given  to  62  b.c- 
conquered  princes  and  peoples  in  Asia  Minor  and  *  B,c- 
Syria,  a  second   consulship  before   the   expiration   of  the 
required  interval  of  ten  years  since  his  other  consulship,  and 
lands  for  his  soldiers.     The  senate  refused  compliance  with 
all  his  demands :  and  in  the  year  60  he  was  compelled  to 
seek  aid  from  a  man  who   had   such   influence  over  the 
Roman  rabble  that  he  could  put  effective  pressure  on  the 
senate. 

While  Pompeius  had  been  absent  in  the  East,  Gaius  Julius 
Csesar  had  been  active  in  political  contests,  and  in  the  year 
60  B.C.,  at  the  age  of  forty  years,  he  was  the  sole  powerful 
leader  of  the  old  Marian  party.  Marius  had  been  the 
champion  of  the  new  citizens  and  of  the  Roman  paupers : 


270  CAESAR  [chap.  xv. 

Caesar,  in  60  B.C.,  was  champion  of  the  same  interests,  but 
it  was  no  longer  possible  to  distinguish  sharply  between 

the  poorer  new  citizens  and  the  paupers  of  the 
of  the  capital,  since  the  two  classes  were  not  now  kept 

Marian  asunder  by  any  divergence  of  interests.     Caesar 

then  was  simply  the  leader  of  the  poor.  But  the 
poor  were  now  a  very  different  body  of  men  from  the  help- 
less and  aimless  colluvies  of  idlers  which  had  failed  to  uphold 
Tiberius  and  Gaius  Gracchus;  since  that  time  they  had 
been  led  by  Marius,  and  Cinna,  and  Carbo,  who  had  been 
generals  in  command  of  armies. 

In  the  year  61  Caesar,  as  propraetor  of  Further  Spain, 

conducted  a  successful  campaign  in  Galicia.  On 
between         his  return  to  Italy  in  the  summer  of  60  he  was 

nBimll  e^ecte(i  as  one  °f  tne  consuls  for  the  ensuing 
Crassus,  year.  To  him  Pompeius  applied  for  aid,  and 
found  him  willing  to  enter  into  a  contract  of 
alliance  with  him,  on  condition  that  the  rich  Crassus  should 
also  be  one  of  the  contracting  parties. 

During  the  year  of  Caesar's  consulship,  59  B.C.,  Roman 
affairs  were  managed  by  the  popular  assembly  and  by 
Caesar's  ruffians  who  abounded  in  the  Roman  mob,  under 
consulship,  the  leadership  of  Caesar.  Pompeius  obtained 
59    '  '  with  ease  all  that  the  senate  had  refused  him : 

Caesar,  under  a  rogation  proposed  to  the  popular  assembly 
by  his  faithful  henchman,  Vatinius,  was  invested  with  the 
proconsulship  of  Cisalpine  Gaul  for  five  years.  Soon  after- 
wards the  senate  gave  him  Narbonese  Gaul  besides,  believ- 
ing that  unless  they  did  so  he  would  receive  that  also  from 
the  assembly. 

The  provinces  which  Caesar  had  chosen  to  have  assigned 
to  him  were  those  in  which  the  services  of  an  able  general 
could  do  more  for  the  advantage  of  the  Roman  citizens 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  world.    Caesar  repelled  an  invasion 


chap,  xv.]  CAESAR  271 

of  Germans  under  Ariovistus  into  Transalpine  Gaul  which 
might  have  become  as  dangerous  to  Italy  as  the  advance 
of  the  Germans  whom  Marius  had  defeated :  and 
in  eight  campaigns  he  conquered  all  the  Gallic   conqueror 
land  from  the  Alps  to  the  ocean,  and  from  the   of  Gaul  and 

of  the  Roman 

Pyrenees  to  the  Rhine.  In  53  M.  Crassus,  who  dominions, 
was  personally  hostile  to  Pompeius  and  friendly  &  r^gf 
to  Csesar,  lost  his  life  and  a  great  army  in  war 
against  the  Parthians.  Pompeius  had  long  looked  on  Caesar 
and  Crassus  as  his  rivals :  when  Crassus  was  dead  he  thought 
that  by  gaining  an  alliance  with  the  senate  he  could  crush 
Csesar.  The  alliance  was  made,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the 
year  49  the  allies  issued  a  decree  of  the  senate  which  would 
compel  Csesar  to  come  to  Rome  for  a  short  time  without 
any  proconsular  imperium  to  protect  him  from  being 
accused  of  high  treason.  Csesar  knew  that  if  he  lost  his 
imperium  he  would  probably  also  lose  his  life,  and  early 
in  49,  as  the  Roman  calendar  then  stood,  but  by  correct 
reckoning  late  in  50,  he  left  his  province  at  its  frontier,  the 
river  Rubicon,  and  marched  in  open  rebellion  into  Italy. 
The  peninsula  submitted  with  little  resistance,  and  then 
Csesar  with  his  army  made  a  circuit  round  the  Mediterranean 
Sea,  fighting  everywhere  against  the  generals  and  armies 
that  supported  Pompeius  and  the  senate.  In  three  and  a 
half  years  of  hard  work  Spain,  Thessaly,  Egypt,  Asia  Minor, 
and  Africa  were  in  turn  compelled  to  obedience,  and  in 
May  46  B.C.  Csesar  returned  to  Rome  as  master  of  all  the 
Roman  dominions. 

The  victories  of  Csesar  put  an  end  to  the  supremacy  of 
the  Roman  commonwealth  or  the  Roman  senate  over  the 
civilised  world,  and  even  to  the  existence  of  the   „     »    , 

Results  of 

Roman  community  as  a  perfectly  independent  Caesar's 
state.      Henceforth    the  Roman    citizens  were  vlctones- 
only  a  part,  though  still  the  most  important  part,  of  the 


272  C^SAR  [chap.  xv. 

great  political  aggregate  from  which  Caesar  could  demand 
obedience.  Csesar  drew  his  strength  not  from  the  Roman 
citizens  as  such,  but  from  the  devoted  affection  of  his  army, 
and  from  the  good  will  of  all  the  provincials  and  of  the 
poorer  classes  in  Italy.  In  shaping  his  policy  he  had  to 
attend  quite  as  much  to  the  interests  of  the  provincials  as 
to  the  wishes  of  the  Roman  citizens. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

COMPARISON   OF   ITALIAN   TOWNS   WITH   GREEK   TOWNS 

The  only  Italian  peoples  that  are  known  to  us  through  a 
long  period  of  their  existence  are  those  that  lived  in  Latium. 
From  the  age  when  they  settled  in  the  Latin  Campagna  as 
agricultural  tribes,  the  character  that  they  were  likely  to 
assume  in  the  course  of  time  was  indicated  by  their  physical 
and  human  environment.  They  tilled  the  rich  soil  that  had 
long  ago  been  scattered  over  the  plain  by  the  Alban  volcano, 
and  therefore  had  far  more  wealth  than  their  neighbours  who 
lived  on  comparatively  sterile  ground.  They  had  not,  as 
the  peoples  of  Hellas  had,  mountain  ranges  to  protect  them 
from  attack,  but  were,  probably  from  the  beginning,  subject 
to  constant  molestation  from  the  rude  iEquian  and  Volscian 
highlanders,  and  long  before  any  time  that  is  known  to  us 
they  needed  defence  also  against  the  powerful  Etruscan 
townsmen.  Hence,  since  they  had  no  natural  defences,  they 
must,  if  they  could,  get  security  by  living  on  sites  of  natural 
strength  within  the  artificial  protection  of  town  walls.  It 
chanced  that  they  had  plenty  of  strong  sites  at  hand,  and 
abundance  of  stone  to  build  with.  Hence  they  made  them- 
selves fortresses  to  live  in,  and  grew  into  military  town  com- 
munities. Moreover  they  had  no  inducement  to  attempt 
maritime  enterprise  because  few  of  their  towns  were  near 
the  shore,  and  those  few  had  no  islands  within  sight  to 
tempt  them  to  seafaring  pursuits.  Hence  they  had  no  sea- 
borne commerce,  and  all  of  them  were  nothing  more  than 
purely  military  and  agricultural  communities  of  townsmen. 

S  273 


274  NO  COALESCENCE  [chap.  xvi. 

The  military  towns  of  Latium  were  not  compelled,  as  the 

Greek  maritime  and  commercial  cities  were  compelled,  to 

live  in    political    isolation   from    one    another. 

The  Latin  L  ... 

towns  could     They  stood  in  the  same  relations  with  one  another 
J°m  in  as  prevailed  among  the  military  towns  of  Boeotia. 

alliances  or  r  °  J 

confedera-  They  could  make  alliances  and  keep  them  :  they 
could  seldom  cou^  form  a  confederation  and  act  faithfully  in 
govern  one  concert  together  for  the  purposes  of  the  confeder- 
ation :  but,  in  Latium  no  less  than  in  Boeotia,  it 
was  almost  impossible  for  one  military  town  to  govern 
another.  In  Boeotia  when  the  strong  town  of  Thebes 
conquered  the  weaker  town  of  Orchomenus  in  368,1  the 
victorious  town  did  not  attempt  to  govern  the  conquered 
town,  but  put  the  inhabitants  to  the  sword.  In  Latium, 
when  the  prehistoric  Romans  conquered  Antemnse  and 
Crustumerium  and  other  towns,  they  did  not  venture  to 
keep  them  standing  and  to  try  to  govern  them.  They  did 
not  indeed  take  such  a  murderous  course  as  the  Thebans 
had  adopted  when  they  conquered  Orchomenus :  they  had 
good  reason  for  not  taking  it  since  they  knew  that  any 
Latins  would  be  willing  to  help  them  in  fighting  against  the 
Etruscans.  Hence  they  kept  the  inhabitants  of  the  con- 
quered towns  alive,  but  destroyed  their  towns.  Even  so  it 
was  found  that  they  could  not  govern  the  descendants  of 
the  conquered  at  their  pleasure :  those  descendants  seceded 
from  them  and  would  not  come  back  till  they  had  been 
assured  that  they  should  have  a  government  of  their  own 
for  their  protection :  thus  the  first  experiment  of  the  Romans 
in  dealing  with  conquered  towns  led  to  the  establishment  of 
a  state  within  the  Roman  state.  Long  afterwards,  when  the 
Romans  in  338  conquered  all  the  Latin  towns,  they  only 
ventured  to  take  Tusculum  and  four  more  towns  under 
their  own  government  by  giving  the  Roman  citizenship  to 

1  Diodorus,  15.  79. 


chap,  xvi.]  OF  ITALIAN  TOWNS  275 

their  inhabitants.  The  remainder  of  the  Latin  cities  were 
converted  into  dependent  allies,  or  vassal  communities, 
governing  themselves,  but  compelled  to  obey  the  Romans 
in  all  matters  of  external  policy  and  to  provide  them  with 
contingents  of  troops.  It  was  more  conducive  to  the  pro- 
sperity of  a  town  considered  as  a  locality  to  become  a  vassal 
than  to  be  absorbed  into  Rome.  Tusculum  and  the  other 
four  Latin  towns  that  in  338  received  Roman  citizenship 
disappeared  promptly  from  history  and  only  reappeared 
nearly  two  centuries  later  as  sites  for  the  suburban 
residences  of  wealthy  Romans :  some  of  the  Latin  fortresses 
that  became  vassals  to  Rome,  especially  Praeneste,  afterwards 
attained  to  great  importance  in  consequence  of  their  size 
and  wealth  and  commanding  strategic  situations.  This  does 
not  however  prove  that  individual  descendants  of  Tusculan 
parents  may  not  by  migration  to  Rome  have  been  in  a 
more  enviable  position  than  the  inhabitants  of  such  a  vassal 
town  as  Praeneste. 

When  the  Romans  conquered  all  the  Italians  they  per- 
mitted all  the  old  Italian  towns  and  also  the  newly 
founded   Latin   colonies   to  govern   themselves,   „ 

0  .        No  common 

only  requiring  them  to   obey  Roman  orders  in  government 
regard  to  external  affairs  and  the  furnishing  of  for  "r  ^ly 

o  o  resulted  from 

troops.  Thus  the  conquest  of  Italy  by  the  Romans  Roman 
did  not  bring  the  towns  in  the  peninsula  under  conques  s— 
a  common  government.  The  wars  against  Carthage  mani- 
festly did  nothing  towards  bringing  Italy  under  one  govern- 
ment, though  the  second  war  showed  how  much  the  Romans 
owed  to  their  alliance  with  the  Latin  colonies.  And,  lastly, 
the  conquest  of  distant  provinces  not  only  did  nothing 
towards  setting  up  a  common  government  for  Italy  but 
even  loosened  the  bands  of  the  alliance  between  the  Romans 
and  their  vassal  towns  in  Italy  because  it  led  the  Romans 
to  impose  unfair  burdens  on  the  Latins  and  the  Italians. 


276  THE  ROMAN  DOMINIONS  [chap.  xvi. 

The  event  that  at  last  led  to  the  abolition  of  the  separate 
governments  of  the  Latin  and  Italian  towns  and  their 
—nor  any  union  under  something  that  bore  the  semblance 
settled  of  a  common  government  was  the  approach  to 

government  Italy  of  the  Cimbri  and  the  Teutones.  The 
from  the  war  advent  of  these  dangerous  foes  compelled  the 

against  the  . 

Cimbri  and  Romans  to  enrol  all  the  able  bodied  men  in 
the  Teutones.  jfcaiy  jn  their  army :  and  when  the  invaders  had 
been  repelled  the  Italians  who  had  served  as  mercenary 
soldiers  compelled  the  Romans  to  accept  them  as  fellow 
citizens,  and  it  followed  that  the  Latins  also  were  admitted 
into  the  Roman  tribes.  But  after  the  new  citizens  had 
been  admitted  no  one  knew,  except  during  ten  years  after 
Sulla's  retirement,  whether  the  powers  of  government  rested 
with  the  senate,  which  aoted  on  behalf  of  the  body  of 
civilian  inhabitants  of  Italy,  or  with  any  general  who  chanced 
to  have  a  strong  mercenary  army  present  in  Italy.  The 
senate  yet  for  twenty  years  after  the  year  70,  when  the 
popular  assembly  turned  against  it,  was  able  to  enjoy  a  share 
of  authority,  but  only  because  the  generals  and  armies  in 
the  Roman  dominions  were  still  numerous,  and  were  too 
jealous  of  one  another  to  act  unitedly  for  the  overthrow  of 
civilian  government. 

In  the  provinces  that  the  Romans  acquired  between  146 
and  59  there  was  in  49  B.C.  no  community  larger  than  a 
canton  or  a  city.  When  Macedonia  was  conquered  in  168 
it  was  broken  up  into  four  cantons : x  when  the  kingdom 
of  Pergamum  was  converted  into  a  Roman  province  in  133, 
it  was  divided  into  cities.  In  Gaul,  conquered  between  58 
B.C.  and  50  B.C.,  there  still  subsisted  in  49  B.C.  some  small 
nationalities  as  the  Sequani  and  the  Haedui:  but  those 
small  nationalities  had  little  capacity  for  acting  in  concert. 
Whether  the  whole  of  the  Italians  after  the  time  of  Sulla 

1  Mommsen,  Hist.,  2.  302. 


chap,  xvi.]  BEFORE  CLESAR'S  TIME  277 

formed  a  fairly  coherent  community,  it  is  hard  to  judge : 
the  one  thing  certain  is  that,  after  the  armies  of  mercenary 
soldiers  gained  a  dominant  position,  the  Italians 
as  a  civilian  community  were   impotent.     The   dominions  in 
Roman  dominions  in  49  B.C.  when  Csesar  invaded  4^  ~  \.a 

no  effective 

Italy  consisted  of  a  number  of  separate  com-   common 
munities :  all  the  communities  outside  of  Italy 
were  small,  and  the  Roman  dominions  did  not  possess  and 
never  had    possessed  a    common    government,   since   the 
governing  organ  at  Rome  had  never  been  able  to  control  the 
generals  in  the  provinces. 

The  Italian  towns  then  were  like  the  Greek  towns  in  not 
being  able  to  govern  one  another  or  to  govern  any  de- 
pendency. And  the  bodies  politic  in  the  Italian  Types  of 
towns  were  comparable  with  the  larger  urban  urban  bodies 
bodies  politic  in  Greek  towns:  thus  the  Latin  Greece  and 
League  of  towns  was  comparable  with  the  Italy- 
Boeotian  League :  the  Roman  bodies  politic  from  340  B.C.  to 
201  B.C.  were  not  very  unlike  the  Attic  bodies  politic  from 
Solon  to  Kleisthenes  except  in  the  fact  that  they  had  an 
admirable  system  of  foreign  policy,  whereas  the  Athenians 
had  none :  and  lastly  the  Romans  from  200  B.C.  to  49  B.C. 
when  in  receipt  of  plunder  and  from  133  B.C.  to  49  B.C.  when 
in  receipt  of  both  plunder  and  tribute  were  like  the 
Athenians  from  454  B.C.  to  413  B.C.  when  in  receipt  of 
tribute.  On  the  other  hand  there  were  types  of  bodies 
politic  peculiar  to  Greece  and  another  peculiar  to  Italy. 
Greece  alone  had  its  three  score  purely  urban  communities 
engaged  only  in  maritime  commerce,  and  its  garrison  of 
slave  masters  at  Sparta :  Italy  alone  had  a  city  in  which  the 
body  politic  was  compounded  of  fully  qualified  citizens 
(Patricians)  and  of  half  qualified  citizens  (Plebeians),  and 
in  which  the  half  qualified  citizens  had  magistrates  of  their 
own  and  formed  a  state  within  the  state. 


278  TYPES  OF  [chap.  xvi. 

A  tabular  enumeration,  showing  the  Greek  and  Italian 
urban  bodies  politic  in  their  pedigrees,  and  mentioning 
their  governments,  will  make  it  easy  to  remember 
enumeration  what  they  were.  An  enumeration  of  the  Greek 
of  the  types.  communities  has  already  been  set  at  the  end  of 
my  twelfth  chapter.  Those  parts  of  it  which  refer  to  Greek 
communities  not  having  analogues  in  Italy  need  not  be 
repeated  at  length,  and  can  be  indicated  in  a  few  words  or 
by  reference  to  a  page.  There  is  in  fact  no  pedigree  of  urban 
bodies  politic  in  Greece  running  quite  parallel  with  one  in 
Italy,  except  that  of  the  Boeotian  federation,  parallel  with 
that  of  the  Latin  federation.  There  is  no  series  of  bodies 
politic  in  a  Greek  city  that  runs  parallel  throughout  with 
the  series  in  Rome,  and  the  pedigree  of  Roman  bodies  politic 
must  on  the  whole  be  deemed  to  be  unique.  But  the  series 
of  bodies  politic  in  Athens  in  some  parts  exhibits  points  of 
contrast  or  resemblance  with  the  series  in  Rome,  and  it 
is  therefore  worth  while  to  express  them  both  without 
abbreviation. 


CHAP.    XVI.] 


UEBAN  COMMUNITIES 


279 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  GREEK  AND  ITALIAN  BODIES 
POLITIC,  ARRANGED  IN  PEDIGREES,  AND  THEIR 
GOVERNMENTS. 


Bodies  Politic. 

Group  1. — In  about  sixty  purely 

maritime  cities.     See  p.  157. 
Simple  urban  communities. 


Governments. 


Class  governments. 


Group  2. — In  Bceotia  and  Latium. 

Federal  bodies  politic.  Federal  government. 


Group  3. — In  Argolis  and  Attica, 
which  had  each  a  chief  city 
and  other  towns. 

(1)  In  Argolis.     See  p.  157. 

(2)  In  Attica. 
(a)  Till  490  B.C. 

A  succession  of  composite  bodies 
politic,  very  seldom  fighting 
by  land  and  having  no  alli- 
ances. 


(b)  From  454  B.C.  to  431  B.C. 

A  simple  community,  partly 
urban,  partly  rural,  in  receipt 
of  tribute,  and  trying  to  avoid 
a  war  with  all  the  Greeks. 


At  one  time  mild  oligarchia,  at 
another  mild  tyrannis,  at 
others  mixed  government 
consisting  of 

(1)  Yearly  magistrates. 

(2)  A  senate  (Areopagus)  steadily 
growing  weaker. 

(3)  Assembly. 

(4)  Popular  law  courts. 

Mixed  government. 
Active  organ,  one  man,  Perikles. 
Passive  organ,   the  poor  voters 
in  the  assembly. 


280 


TABULAE 


[chap.  XVI. 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  GREEK  AND  ITALIAN  BODIES  POLITIC,  ARRANGED 
IN   PEDIGREES,    AND  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

(c)  From  429  B.C.  to  413  B.C. 

A  simple  urban  community,  in 
receipt  of  tribute,  all  crowded 
within  the  walls  of  Athens 
and  fighting  desperately  for 
the  retention  of  the  tribute. 

(d)  From  413  b.c.  to  405  B.C. 

A  simple  urban  community, 
with  diminished  spoil  from 
the  tribute,  fighting  des- 
perately for  the  retention 
of  what  it  had. 


Governments. 

Class  government. 
Imprudent  rule  of  the  poor. 


Class  government. 

Usually,  rule  of  the  poor,  still 
more  imprudent  than  before. 
In  411  B.C.  rule  of  a  gang 
of  ruffians,  led  by  an  ex- 
demagogue. 


(e)  From  405  B.C.  to  338  B.C. 

A   succession    of    simple   urban    Class  government. 

communities,  descended  from    Selfish  and  unpatriotic  rule   of 

receivers      of      tribute      and        the  poor. 

rapidly  degenerating. 


Group  4. — In    Rome.       Isolated 

pedigree. 
[In  prehistoric  times,  a  succession    Form     of 

of    highly    composite    bodies        known. 

politic      consisting      of      (1) 

Roman     burgesses     (Patres), 

(2)    servants    of    the    Patres, 

whom  the  Patres  had  fetched 

in  to   their  city  from  towns 

which  they  had  destroyed.] 


government     little 


CHAP.    XVI.] 


VIEW 


281 


TABULAR  VIEW  OF  GREEK  AND  ITALIAN  BODIES  POLITIC,  ARRANGED 
IN   PEDIGREES,    AND   THEIR   GOVERNMENTS.—  Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

(a)  From      the      expulsion 

Tarquin  to  340  B.C. 
Patres  and  Plebs. 


of 


Governments. 


Two  governments  constantly  at 
strife. 


(b)  From  338  B.C.  to  201  B.C. 

A   succession  of  bodies  politic,    Mixed  government. 

partly    urban,    partly    rural,    Very  strong  senate,  magistrates, 
intent    on    war,    with    many        assemblies, 
alliances.     Compare  and  con- 
trast Attica  (a). 


(c)  From  168  B.C.  to  46  B.C. 

Purely    urban    communities,   in    Class  government. 

receipt  of  plunder  and  tribute.    Very  selfish  rule  of  the  rich. 

Compare  Attica  (b)  (c)  (d). 

Group  5. — In   Sparta.      Isolated 
pedigree.     See  p.  159. 


From  the  table  it  will  be  seen  that  the  pedigrees  of  bodies 
politic  in  Attica  and  Rome,  both  of  them  countries  in  which 
a  chief  city  conquered  lesser  towns,  run  roughly 
parallel    at    the    beginning,   then   diverge,  but  of  Attica 
afterwards  converge  again,  and  then  run  parallel  and    ome' 
to  the  end.      In   the  early  periods   marked   (a)  for  each 
country,  we  see  that  in  Attica  there  was  probably  some 
dissension  between  the  men  of  the  chief  city  Athens  and 


282  ATTICA  AND  ROME  [chap.  xvi. 

the  men  of  the  other  towns  :  in  Rome,  where  the  burgesses 
of  Rome  (the  Patres)  had  fetched  the  natives  of  the 
conquered  towns  into  Rome  to  serve  them,  the  strife 
between  the  Patres  and  the  Plebs  was  extremely  acute.  In 
the  second  periods,  each  marked  (6)  there  were  similarities 
but  also  a  marked  dissimilarity.  There  was  in  Attica  in  the 
period  marked  (b)  a  succession  of  bodies  politic,  partly 
urban,  partly  rural,  until  508  B.C.  not  well  united:  these 
bodies  politic  had  usually  a  mixed  form  of  government,  in 
which,  since  they  had  no  alliances,  the  senate  was  always 
declining  in  power.  In  Rome  in  the  period  marked  (b) 
there  was  a  succession  of  bodies  politic  partly  urban,  partly 
rural,  all  of  them  thoroughly  united  by  zeal  for  conquest : 
these  bodies  politic  had  mixed  forms  of  government,  and 
as  they  had  foreign  alliances  which  they  knew  to  be  of  the 
utmost  value  to  them,  their  senate  was  beyond  comparison 
the  strongest  organ  among  their  governing  bodies.  In  the 
periods  marked  (c)  (d)  (e)  for  Attica,  and  (c)  for  Rome,  the 
inhabitants  of  Attica  and  the  Romans  were  both  corrupted 
by  the  exaction  and  expenditure  of  tribute  from  foreign 
lands.  The  inhabitants  of  Attica  were  driven  into  Athens 
by  Spartan  invaders,  the  Roman  farmers  were  driven  into 
Rome  by  Hannibal,  and  their  descendants  stayed  in  Rome 
to  enjoy  doles  and  amusements  which  were  paid  for  out  of 
the  tribute :  the  people  of  Attica  were  ruled  selfishly  by  the 
poor,  the  Romans  equally  selfishly  by  the  rich.  And  the 
peoples  of  Attica  and  of  Rome  were  alike  in  their  overthrow  : 
the  Athenians,  all  becoming  civilians  and  all  being  idlers 
like  their  fathers  before  them,  were  conquered  by  the 
Macedonians :  the  civilian  part  of  the  Romans  was  over- 
powered by  an  army  of  professional  soldiers,  for  the  most 
part  of  Italian  but  not  of  Roman  extraction,  which  their 
fathers  had  created  as  a  serviceable  instrument  for  conquest 
of  territory  and  exaction  of  tribute. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE   EMPIRE   OF  THE   CjESARS 

When  Caesar  had  defeated  all  the  generals  who  opposed 
him,  there  were  no  longer  many  armies  and  many  generals, 
but  one  army  and  one  general.  The  army  was  the  only 
powerful  body  of  men  acting  unitedly,  and  its  general  was 
sole  ruler  in  the  civilised  world.  The  civilian  community  of 
the  Roman  citizens  and  senate  had  failed  to  govern  mankind : 
it  remained  to  be  seen  whether  the  new  military  ruler  would 
be  more  successful  in  the  task  of  government,  and  whether 
he  would  transmit  his  authority  to  successors  competent  to 
continue  his  work. 

Csesar's  own  time  was  short.  Although  he  had  been 
raised  to  supreme  authority  by  his  army,  against  the  will 
of  a  great  part  of  the  civilian  citizens,  he  would  Murder  of 
not  employ  military  force  to  coerce  the  civilians :  Caesar- 
and  yet  he  did  not  pretend  to  the  citizens  that  he  was  any- 
thing less  than  their  absolute  master.  He  conducted 
himself  exactly  as  if  he  were  sole  ruler  by  common  consent 
of  all,  and,  treating  men  who  had  been  opposed  to  him  with 
the  greatest  possible  kindness,  magnanimously  trusted  that 
in  return  for  his  generous  consideration  they  would  refrain 
from  hurting  him.  But  his  rule  had  not  received  the 
common  consent  of  all.  Especially  it  was  detested  by  some 
members  of  the  old  curule  families.  Under  the  lead  of 
Brutus  and  Cassius,  some  sixty  or  eighty  senators,  of  whom 
the  greater  part  had  accepted  benefits  at  his  hands,  conspired 
together  and  murdered  him  on  the  ides  of  March   in  the 

283 


284  OCTAVIANUS  [chap.  xvii. 

year  44  b.c.  before  he  had  completed  two  years  of  supreme 
authority. 

The  death  of  Caesar  left  the  world  without  a  government. 
The  armies  were  scattered  in  the  provinces,  and  as  none  of 
Rise  of  them   had   a   general   with   it   who   aspired   to 

Octavianus.     succeed  Caesar,  they  did  nothing  for  the  moment 
towards  settling  who  should  be  the  ruler.     Hence  the  civilian 
Roman  citizens  were  able  to  seize  such  a  semblance  of 
authority  as  they  had  enjoyed  sixteen  years  earlier,  before 
Caesar  and  Pompeius  and  Crassus  shared  the  great  offices 
among  them.     On  March  17,  the  second  day  after  the  murder, 
the  senate,  at  a  meeting  which  the  murderers  did  not  dare  to 
attend,  restored  the  old  republican  government  of  the  senate 
and  the  popular  assembly,  but  confirmed  the  administrative 
measures  of  Caesar.     The  government  thus  established  could 
only  last  till  some  ambitious  men  ventured  to  get  command 
of  armies  and  overthrow  it.     The  first  who  got  an  army  was 
M.  Antonius.     To  oppose  Antonius  the  senate  at  the  beginning 
of  43  sent  out  an  army  under  Hirtius  and  Pansa  the  consuls 
of  the  year:   with  them   they  sent   also  as   propraetor  C. 
Octavius,  only  nineteen  years  old,  great  nephew  and  heir  of 
Caesar,  and  under  Caesar's  will  his  adopted  son,  in  command 
of  an  army  which  he  had  hired  at  his  own  cost.     The  armies 
sent  out  by  the  senate  defeated  Antonius  at  Mutina  (Modena) : 
but  the  two  consuls  were  killed  and  Octavius  was  left  sole 
commander  of  the  army  of  the  senate.     Antonius  the  enemy 
of  the  senate  withdrew  to  Gaul  and  made  a  junction  with 
Lepidus  and  his  army :  Octavius  deserted  the  cause  of  the 
senate  and  made  a  compact  with  its  enemies  Antonius  and 
Lepidus.    The    three,    Octavius,    Antonius,    and    Lepidus 
agreed  to  divide  all  the  great  commands  among  them,  and 
Octavius,  obtaining  a  lex  curiata  to  confirm  his  adoption  by 
Caesar,  gained  a  legal  right  to  bear  the  name  he  had  already 
assumed,  C.  Julius  Caesar  Octavianus.    In  42  Antonius  and 


chap,  xvil]  OCTAVIANUS  285 

Octavianus  had  yet  to  wage  a  war  against  Brutus  and 
Cassius,  governors  of  the  provinces  of  Macedonia  and  Syria : 
they  defeated  them  at  Philippi  in  Macedonia.  Then  the 
victors  divided  the  Roman  dominions :  Octavianus  had  the 
west,  Antonius  the  east,  leaving  only  Africa  for  Lepidus. 
As  time  went  on,  dissensions  arose  between  Octavianus 
and  Antonius:  after  the  campaign  in  which  their  navies 
and  armies  met  at  Actium  in  B.C.  31  Octavianus  was  the 
sole  ruler  of  the  civilised  world. 

During  the  brief  reign   of  Cassar,   the  dependencies  of 
Rome  beyond  the  seas  were  for  the  first  time  ruled  by  a 
government  which  also  ruled  the  Roman  citizens,   a  common 
Before  Caesar's  time  the  provinces  had  indeed   &ovemment 
been   under  local  governors  appointed   by  the   Roman 
Roman  government:  but  those  local  governors   established 
had  not  been  governed  by  the  Roman  govern-   by  Caesar 
ment.     Caesar  ruling  at  Rome  insisted  that  the   ushed^by 
provincial  governors  as  well  as  every  one  else   Octavianus. 
should  obey  him.     Octavianus  after  his  victory  at  Actium 
was  able  to  exact  from  them  no  less  obedience  than  Caesar, 
and  from  the  battle  of  Actium  we  may  date  the  first  per- 
manent establishment  of  the  Roman  Empire  as  a  political 
aggregate  subject  to  a  single  government. 

The  whole  mass  of  the  Roman  dominions  from  the  battle 
of  Actium  onwards,  being  under  one  government,  was  one 
empire :  but,  being  composed  of  dissimilar  com-   character 
munities,  it  was   a  heterogeneous  empire.     The  of  the 
materials  which  Octavianus  brought  under  one  dominions 
government  were  in  the  older  provinces  a  multi-   3i  B.C. 
tude  of  cities  and  some  rural  cantons,  in  Gaul  a  number  of 
small  nationalities  and  cities,  in  Italy  a  moderately  coherent 
community  embracing  the  whole  population  of  the  penin- 
sula :  in  Rome  the  capital  of  the  empire  the  poor  still  hated 
the  rich  and  the  rich  despised  the  poor. 


286  THE  WORK  OF  [chap.  xvii. 

Octavianus  when  he  conquered  at  Actium  had  already 

been  master  of  the  west  for  nearly  twelve  years,  and  thus 

when  he  became  sole  ruler  of  the  world  knew 

that  lay  what  tasks  lay  before  him  :  the  remaining  forty 

before  gve  years  0f  his  life  were  spent  in  performing 

Octavianus.  J  ....  ■> 

them.  As  his  dominions  were  cleft  into  small 
fragments,  he  had  not  much  reason  to  fear  that  any  fragment 
or  combination  of  fragments  would  give  him  trouble  by 
trying  to  become  independent:  but  he  must  attempt  to 
close  up  some  of  the  gaping  wounds  inflicted  on  the  provinces 
and  on  the  community  of  Roman  citizens  in  Italy  by  lack  of 
governance,  and  he  must  keep  his  frontiers  secure  from  the 
attacks  of  the  exterior  barbarians. 

The  miseries  of  the  provinces  had   all  been   caused  by 

the   extortions  of  Roman  generals  and   taxgatherers   and 

adventurers.     Under  Octavianus  the  extortions 

vincesand      immediately    became    rare.1     Each     provincial 

the  Roman     community  was  merely  compelled  to  pay  fixed 

citizens.  ....  . 

sums,  which,  since  it  now  got  government  in 
return  for  them,  may  be  henceforth  called  rather  taxes  than 
tribute.  To  deal  with  the  Roman  citizens  was  a  matter  that 
needed  delicate  handling:  Octavianus  managed  it  more 
skilfully  than  Caesar.  He  saw  that  the  senate  and  the 
otner  citizens  were  deeply  mortified  at  not  possessing  the 
political  powers  that  senate  and  citizens  had  enjoyed  long 
ago,  and  he  resolved  to  give  them  such  a  show  of  privileges 
as  they  could  use  without  abusing.  His  motives  for  adopting 
this  course  have  not  been  recorded,  but  we  may  conjecture 
what  they  may  have  been.  The  mischievous  old  curule 
families  had  been  almost  entirely  extinguished  in  the  civil 
wars  and  in  a  great  proscription  set  on  foot  in  the  end  of 
44  B.C.  by  Antonius  with  the  consent  of  Octavianus.     The 

1  Licinus  at  Lugdunum  in  Gaul,  B.C.  16,  is  the  only  conspicuous  instance 
of  an  extortioner  under  Octavianus. — Merivale,  Hist.  Horn.,  vol.  4,  218. 


chap,  xvii.]  OCTAVIANUS  287 

existing  upper  class  at  Rome  was  more  inclined  than  the 
old  curule  families  had  been  to  obey  its  master,  and  its 
services  were  wanted  in  the  provinces  where  work  had  to  be 
done  which  none  but  upper  class  Romans  could  perform. 
It  was  better  for  Octavianus  that  the  men  of  the  upper 
class  at  Rome  should  be  amused  with  shadowy  privileges 
than  that  they  should  conspire  to  murder  him  as  they 
had  murdered  Julius.  And  lastly  Octavianus  must  have 
remembered  that,  in  case  citizens  in  Rome  of  any  class 
made  any  use  that  he  disliked  of  the  privileges  that  he  gave 
them,  he  could  call  in  the  army  and  take  away  the  privileges : 
on  the  other  hand,  if  the  privileges  were  employed  in  a  way 
that  he  approved,  a  senate  and  an  assembly  at  Rome  might 
at  some  future  time  actually  be  useful :  for  it  was  quite 
conceivable  that  the  army  under  some  weak  successor  of 
Augustus  might  again  break  up  into  armies,  and  then  the 
civilian  senate  might  serve  as  a  check  on  military  violence. 
The  result  of  the  decision  adopted  by  Octavianus  was  that 
in  Rome,  though  he  was  sovereign,  he  bore  himself  as  a 
citizen.  In  27  B.C.  four  years  after  the  battle  of  Actium,  he 
resigned  the  irregular  powers  that  he  had  seized  under  his 
agreement  with  Antonius  and  Lepidus  and  under  subsequent 
agreements  made  with  Antonius,  and  accepted  as  a  gift  from 
the  senate  and  the  assembly  such  powers  as  sufficed  for  his 
security.  From  the  senate  he  received  the  power  of  im- 
perator,  or  the  right  to  be  proconsul  and  supreme  commander 
in  all  the  provinces,  together  with  the  titles  of  princeps  and 
Augustus,  which  had  not  as  yet  any  definite  meaning :  from 
the  assembly  he  accepted  the  tribunicia  potestas  or  chief 
civilian  magistracy  over  all  Roman  citizens.1 

But  though  Octavianus,  whom  we  must  henceforth  call 
Augustus,  had  been  offered  the  proconsular  imperium  in  all 
the  provinces  he  declined  to  exercise  it  except  in  those  of 

1  Mommsen,  Staatnrecht,  vol.  2,  787-821,  in  edition  of  1875. 


288  AUGUSTUS  [chap.  xvii. 

them  which  required  the  presence  of  large  armies.     Out  of 
the  twenty  two  provinces  twelve  were  unlikely  to  be  dis- 
turbed by  war:  these  were  left  at  the  disposal 

Moderation         _  .  ,  ..    ,  ... 

of  Octav-        °t  the  senate  and  were  called  senatorial  provinces. 

ianus  ^he  other  ten  were  kept  by  Augustus  under  his 

Augustus.  r      f     .  °       . 

own  control  and  were  called  imperial  provinces. 

In  the  senatorial  provinces  the  resident  commanders  were 

proconsuls  or  proprietors  nominated  by  the  senate,  subject 

to  the  approval  of  the  emperor;  in  the  imperial  provinces 

the  commanders  were  legati  Augusti,  lieutenants   of  the 

emperor  and  appointed  by  him.1    Towards  the  senate  and 

the  assembly  the  demeanour  of  Augustus  was  unassuming. 

He  habitually  consulted   the  senate   on   matters  of  great 

importance,  and  received  from  it  such  advice  as  the  senators 

thought  would    be    pleasing   to  him:    he    permitted    the 

centuries  to  elect  curule  magistrates  and  the  tribes  to  elect 

tribunes,    merely   indicating    those    candidates    whom    he 

wished  to  see  successful.     Throughout  his  long  reign  he  was 

only  troubled  with  four  plots  of  senators  for  his  assassination, 

and  at  the  end  of  it  senators  and  citizens  alike  recognised 

that  he  had  been  a  kind  and  considerate  master. 

As  the  army  was  the  only  powerful  body  of  men  in  the 

world  Augustus  gave  it    a  large  share  of   his   attention. 

^  During  the  two  years  of  civil  strife  that  followed 

The  army  °  J 

under  the  murder  of  Julius  the  armies  of  the  contending 

ugustus.  commanders  had  amounted  in  the  aggregate  to 
seventy  five  legions  and  a  great  quantity  of  auxiliary  troops. 
The  strength  of  the  army  at  the  disposal  of  Augustus  after 
the  battle  of  Actium  has  not  been  recorded,  but  we  can 
calculate  that  it  cannot  have  been  less  than  fifty  legions 
with  many  extra-legionary  auxiliaries.2  In  the  immunity 
from  civil  wars  that  followed  the  battle  of  Actium  this  large 

1  Diet.  Biogr.,  article  'Augustus,'  vol.  1,  428. 

2  Marquardt,  Staatsmc,  vol.  2,  430,  431  in  edition  of  1876. 


chap,  xvil]  AUGUSTUS  289 

force  was  no  longer  needed,  and,  if  it  had  been  needed, 
Augustus  had  not  the  money  to  maintain  it:  accordingly 
he  disbanded  parts  of  it  as  soon  as  he  could.  In  30  B.C.  he 
planted  many  of  his  veterans  in  twenty  eight  colonies  in 
Italy,  giving  every  man  a  plot  of  land :  in  14  B.C.  he  pro- 
vided in  like  manner  for  discharged  veterans  in  a  great 
number  of  colonies  in  the  provinces : x  in  5  a.d.  he  decreed 
that  every  legionary  soldier  on  getting  his  discharge  after 
twenty  years'  service  should  receive  three  thousand  denarii 
containing  silver  worth  a  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  in 
our  currency.2  In  a.d.  8,  when  the  reductions  had  been 
completed,  the  army  consisted  of  twenty  eight  legions 
containing  about  a  hundred  and  forty  thousand  men,  and 
of  auxiliary  forces  not  much  inferior  in  numbers  to  the 
legionaries,3  divided  into  regiments  of  cavalry  and  regiments 
of  infantry  called  respectively  alee  and  cohortes.  The  legions 
and  the  auxiliaries  were  all  stationed  in  the  provinces  and 
mainly  on  the  frontiers  of  the  empire.  In  Italy  the  only 
military  forces  were  nine  praetorian  cohorts  each  a  thousand 
strong,  which  served  the  emperor  as  a  body  guard,  three 
cohortes  urbance  resembling  the  praetorian  cohorts  but  less 
highly  paid,  and  the  cohortes  vigilum  which  performed  the 
duties  of  fire-watch  and  police  for  the  Roman  capital. 

The  defence  of  the  frontiers  led  Augustus  insensibly  into 
making  fresh  conquests.  Some  of  his  generals  annexed  all 
the  south  side  of  the  Danube  from  its  source  in  conquests  of 
the  Black  Forest  to  its  mouths  in  the  Euxine  Sea.  Aus«stus. 
Others  much  further  north  pushed  across  the  Rhine,  and 
after  very  hard  fighting  with  the  German  tribes  got  a  fairly 
firm  hold  of  the  valley  of  the  river  Lippe,  which  joins  the 
Rhine  about  fifty  miles  north  west  of  Cologne,  and  obtained  a 

1  Marquardt, Staatavw.,  1.  450,  452,  ed.  of  1873. 

2  Dion  Cass.  55.  23.  ;  Marquardt,  lb.,  2.  545. 
:!  Tac.  Ann.  4.  5.,  last  four  lines. 

T 


290  AUGUSTUS  [chap.  xvii. 

more  precarious  tenure  of  lands  further  east  on  the  Elbe. 
A  Roman  army  of  occupation  was  planted  in  B.C.  10  about 
Aliso  (Elsen)  near  the  source  of  the  Lippe,  but  was 
destroyed  eighteen  years  later  in  a.d.  9,  when  three  legions 
and  their  auxiliaries  under  Varus  were  cut  to  pieces  in  the 
conflict  or  massacre  of  the  Teutoburgerwald,  which  may 
perhaps  be  regarded  as  the  most  momentous  of  all  military 
operations  in  the  world's  history,  since  it  restored  inde- 
pendence to  those  German  tribesmen,  whose  descendants 
long  afterwards  were  the  founders  of  the  principal  states 
of  mediaeval  and  modern  Europe.  Augustus  in  choosing 
commanders  for  his  wars  beyond  the  frontiers  was  no  doubt 
mindful  of  the  histories  of  Sulla  and  Pompeius  and  Csesar, 
and  did  not  forget  that  generals  who  were  allowed  to 
conquer  fresh  territory  might  after  their  victories  seek 
to  be  masters  of  the  Roman  dominions.  For  this  reason 
all  the  men  to  whom  he  gave  opportunities  of  winning  great 
military  renown  were  selected  from  those  bound  to  him  by 
ties  of  family  and  deeply  interested  in  maintaining  the 
stability  of  his  dynasty  :  they  were  Agrippa  his  son-in-law, 
Tiberius  and  Drusus  his  stepsons,  and,  after  the  death  of 
Drusus,  Germanicus  son  of  Drusus.  All  these  men  showed 
great  military  capacity,  and  were  perfectly  faithful  to  their 
master.  But  Augustus,  in  beginning  his  wars  of  conquest, 
had  forgotten  that  even  when  a  general  is  perfectly  loyal 
his  soldiers  may  seek  to  raise  him  to  an  eminence  which  he 
does  not  desire.  It  was  probably  some  inkling  of  danger 
that  might  arise  from  insubordination  in  a  victorious  army 
that  led  him  to  express  in  one  of  three  documents  that  he 
left  behind  him  at  his  death  the  opinion  that  further 
additions  to  the  Roman  territory  were  undesirable.1 

During  the  last  few  years  of  his  reign  Augustus  employed 
his  stepson  Tiberius  as  his  colleague  in  the  government  of 

1  Tac.  Ann.  1.  11.  end,  with  Suetonius,  Oct.  101,  and  Dion  C.  56.  33. 


chap,  xvil]  TIBERIUS  291 

Italy  and  the  empire;  and  when  he  died  all  men  in  Rome 
assumed  that  Tiberius,  now  fifty  five  years  old,  would  be  his 
successor.     The  only  possible  rival  of  Tiberius    . 

-.  .  .  Accession  of 

was  his  young  nephew  Germamcus,  the  brilliant,  Tiberius, 
victorious,  and  popular  commander  of  eight  I4AD- 
legions  and  of  large  auxiliary  forces  in  the  two  Germanise : 
and  Germanicus  did  not  wish  to  compete  against  Tiberius. 
But  even  so  Tiberius  could  not  step  into  the  empire  as  into 
an  inheritance :  it  was  not  at  all  certain  that  Augustus  had 
any  right  that  would  be  recognised  by  the  armies  in  the 
provinces  to  nominate  his  successor.  Tiberius  remembered 
that  Augustus  had  accepted  the  proconsular  imperium  as 
a  gift  from  the  senate,  and  he  resolved  to  follow  his  example. 
The  senate  was  glad  to  get  a  recognition  of  its  competence 
to  confer  the  empire,  and  after  debates  in  which  individual 
senators  made  clumsy  efforts  to  gain  the  favour  of  the 
new  emperor,  it  readily  gave  Tiberius  for  his  life  and  not 
for  a  term  of  years  all  the  powers  that  Augustus  had 
enjoyed.1 

Only  a  few  days  after  Tiberius  had  received  the  empire 
from  the  senate  he  was  confronted  with  most  formidable 
mutinies  in  two  of  the  armies  on  the  frontiers.  MUtinies 
The  whole  number  of  the  legions  was  twenty  the  frontiers, 
five.  Fourteen  quartered  in  various  provinces  I4  '  ' 
remained  quiescent;  but  three  in  Pannonia  on  the  upper 
valley  of  the  river  Save  threatened  their  officers  in  the 
hope  of  getting  easier  conditions  of  service,  four  in  Germania 
Inferior  tried  to  set  up  their  commander  Germanicus  as 
emperor,  and  four  more  in  Germania  Superior  wavered 
visibly  in  their  allegiance.  Germanicus  who  commanded 
in  both  the  Germanise  honestly  but  with  great  difficulty 
induced  the  eight  legions  in  those  provinces  to  return  to 
obedience :  and  the  outbreak  in  Pannonia  was  quelled  by 

1  Tac.  Ann.  1.  11-14. 


292  TIBEKIUS  [chap.  xvii. 

Drusus  son  of  Tiberius.  Tiberius  saw  that  Germanicus  had 
been  faithful  and  left  him  for  two  years  more  to  fight 
against  the  Germans  beyond  the  Rhine.  After  that  he 
sent  him  to  Syria  where  no  warfare  was  required,  and  in  the 
year  19  a.d.  was  probably  relieved  at  hearing  the  announce- 
ment of  his  death. 

The  two  instruments  that  Tiberius  used  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  empire  were  the  armies  in  the  provinces  and  the 
senate  in  Rome.     After  the  suppression  of  the 
Tiberius  in      great  mutinies  and  the  death  of  Germanicus  he 
the  provinces    trusted  the  armies,  and  his  rule  in  the  provinces 

and  in  Rome.  ,      _ 

was  confident  and  beneficent.  But  m  Rome, 
though  he  paid  deference  to  the  assembled  senate,  he  dis- 
trusted individual  senators.  He  remembered  no  doubt  that 
senators  had  murdered  Julius,  that  senators  had  hoped  to 
murder  Augustus,  and  that  members  of  the  existing  senate 
were  elated  at  the  part  they  had  recently  played  in  dis- 
posing of  the  empire.  His  mistrust  of  senators  was  artfully 
encouraged  by  his  confidant  iElius  Sejanus,  the  prefect  of  the 
praetorian  guards,  and  from  the  ninth  year  of  his  reign, 
a.d.  23,  his  government  in  Rome  became  suspicious  and 
repressive.  He  believed  informers  who  charged  senators 
with  high  treason,  and  either  got  the  senate  to  condemn 
the  accused  to  death,  or  so  frightened  them  that  they 
voluntarily  put  an  end  to  their  lives. 

The  suggestions  of  Sejanus  made  a  permanent  change  in 

the  methods  by  which  the  inhabitants  of  Rome  were  kept 

in  subjection.     During  the  reign  of  Augustus  and 

theVraetorian  in  the  early  years  of  Tiberius  only  three  of  the 

cohorts,  nme  praetorian  cohorts  that  formed  the  house- 

23  A.D. 

hold  brigade  had  been  stationed  in  Rome,  and 

even  of  those  three  the  soldiers  had  no  common  quarters  but 

were  billeted  in  houses  about  the  city  ;  the  other  six  cohorts 

were  encamped  in  Italian  towns,  especially  in  those  towns 


chap,  xvn.]  CLAUDIAN  DYNASTY  293 

in  which  the  emperor  had  a  residence.1  In  a.d.  23  Sejanus, 
being  prefect  of  the  praetorians,  obtained  his  master's  leave 
to  collect  all  his  nine  cohorts  into  a  camp  just  outside  the 
north  eastern  corner  of  Rome  where  they  could  be  lodged 
in  barracks.  After  their  concentration  the  praetorian  cohorts 
became  much  more  ready  for  action,  and  on  the  deaths  of 
Tiberius  and  of  his  next  two  successors  they  or  their  prefects 
determined  which  member  of  the  imperial  family  should 
be  made  ruler  of  the  world. 

Tiberius  bore  the  family  name  of  Claudius  Nero,  and  was 
the  first  of  the  Claudian  dynasty :  after  him  came  three 
more   Claudii.     All   the  four  Claudii  were  op- 

..  ,  .         „  .  ,      The  Claudian 

pressors   or  senators:  but  the   first   three  took   dynasty, 

care   to  be  either   respected   or  liked   by  their   j4A.d.- 
.r  J  68  A.D. 

legions   on   the  frontiers.     Nero,  the   fourth   of 

the  dynasty,  never  during  the  fourteen  years  of  his  reign 

went  near  any  of  the  armies  in  the  provinces.     In  the  year 

67  he  conceived  a  groundless  suspicion  that  some  of  his  best 

generals  were  likely  to  supplant  him  and  summoned  three 

of  them  to  appear  before  him  in  Greece.     Domitius  Corbulo, 

one  of  the  ablest  and  most  faithful  generals  that  ever  served 

a  Roman  emperor,  came  from  Syria,  and  two  Scribonii  from 

the  two  Germanise :  all  three  on  their  arrival  were  obliged 

to  put  themselves  to  death.2     After  this  all  the  generals  in 

the  provinces  saw  that  rebellion  might  be  the  only  way  to 

save  their  lives :  but  all  were  loath  to  act,  because,  though  it 

would  be  easy  to  get  rid  of  Nero,  it  would  be  hard  to  settle 

who  should  reign  in  his  stead. 

In  the  spring  of  68  Galba,  legate  of  Hither  Spain,  learned 

through  an  intercepted  letter  that  Nero  intended  to  kill 

him,  and  saw  that  his  only  chance  of  escape  lay  in  rebellion.3 

Though  his  revolt  was  supported  only  by  the  small  army 

1  Sueton.  Oct.  49 ;  Marqnardt,  Staatsvw.,  2.  461  in  ed.  of  1876. 
■  Dion  C.  63.  17.  8  Suetonius,  Galba,  9. 


294  GALBA,  OTHO,  [chap.  xyii. 

of  the  Spanish  province  and  by  the  praetorian  cohorts  in 
Rome,  it  sufficed  to  end  Nero's  life.  But  in  January  69, 
Wars  to  soon  a^ter  Galba  arrived  in  Rome,  the  soldiers 
settle  the        murdered  him  and  set  up  Otho  in  his  stead: 

succession 

68  and  about  the  same  time  the  eight  legions  in  the  two 

69  a.  d.  Germanise  proclaimed  Vitellius,  and  six  months 
later  seven  legions  in  Egypt  and  Judaea  and  Syria  offered 
the  empire  to  Flavius  Vespasianus.  Fierce  wars  among  the 
armies  brought  great  destruction  of  life  and  property  both 
on  the  soldiers  and  on  the  civilian  population  of  northern 
Italy.  The  generals  of  Vespasian,  being  joined  by  five 
legions  and  by  some  cohorts  stationed  in  the  Danubian 
provinces  prevailed  over  their  opponents,  and  in  December 
of  the  year  69  Vitellius,  the  last  rival  of  Vespasian,  was  slain. 
While  the  contest  between  Vitellius  and  Vespasian  was  still 
undecided,  the  Batavi,  ancestors  of  the  modern  Dutch  people, 
made  an  attempt  under  Civilis  to  regain  their  independence  : 
in  the  year  70  their  courageous  rebellion  was  crushed  and 
Vespasian  reigned  over  all  the  empire  that  had  belonged  to 
the  Claudian  emperors.1 

As  the  terrible  conflicts  of  the  year  69  were  begun  and 
decided  solely  by  armies  and  generals,  it  may  repay  us  if 
_.    „  we   notice  what   were   the   materials   of  which 

The  Roman 

armies,  the  armies  were  composed.    The   units  in  the 

armies  were  legions,  auxiliary  cohorts  and  ala?, 
and  the  praetorian  cohorts.  The  praetorian  cohorts  were 
recruited  exclusively  from  Roman  citizens  resident  in 
Italy:2  the  service  in  them  was  easy  and  brought  with 
it  so  many  advantages  that  Italians  did  not  disdain  to 
undertake  it.  The  auxiliary  cohorts  and  alas,  with  the 
exception   of   a   dozen   or    a    score   of  cohorts   of  Italian 

1  Tacitus  begins  the  five  books  of  his  Historieb  with  the  revolt  of  Galba  : 
the  fifth  book  went  as  far  as  the  complete  victory  of  Vespasian,  but  a  piece 
at  the  end  has  been  lost. 

2  Tac.  Ann.  4.  5. 


chap,  xvil]  VITELLIUS,  VESPASIAN  295 

volunteers1  were  filled  entirely  with  provincials  who  were 
not  Roman  citizens  or  with  barbarians  from  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  empire :  their  business  was  to  help  the 
legions  stationed  on  the  frontiers  of  the  Roman  dominions, 
and  the  number  of  the  men  enrolled  in  them  was  at 
most  times  approximately  equal  to  the  number  in  the 
legions.2  In  regard  to  the  legions  we  do  not  find  in 
ancient  writers  any  explicit  statement  to  inform  us  whether 
all  the  men  serving  in  them  were  Roman  citizens:  but 
Marquardt,  whose  opinion  on  this  question  I  value  more 
than  any  other,  declares  without  reserve  his  belief  that 
they  were.3  While  I  do  not  think  his  reasons  for  his 
belief,  given  in  his  notes,  are  perfectly  convincing,  I  can 
without  disputing  his  conclusion,  point  out  that  one  great 
change  in  the  composition  of  the  legions  was  certainly 
made  between  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar  and  the  death  of 
Nero.  In  58  B.C.  when  Julius  became  proconsul  of  the 
Gallic  provinces  all  the  men  in  the  legions  were  natives 
of  Italy :  at  the  death  of  Nero  all  of  them,  with  casual 
exceptions  of  infinitesimal  minuteness,  were  natives  of  the 
provinces. 

The  first  legion   levied   outside   of  Italy  was  the  Fifth, 
called  Alauda,  raised  by  Julius  in  55  B.C.,  in  his  province  of 
transalpine  Gaul,  probably  from  the  colonies  of 
Roman  citizens  in  Gallia  Narbonensis.4    In  the  the  composi- 
fourteen    years  of   intermittent  civil  war  that  /°"°     e 
came   between   the   murder   of  Julius   and  the  58  b.c- 
battle  of  Actium   many  of  the   legions  under 
Brutus  and  Cassius  and  all  those  under  M.  Antonius  must 
have  been  recruited  outside  of  Italy.     Whether  Octavianus 

1  The  largest  number  of  the  cohorts  of  volunteers  that  we  know  to  have 
existed  till  the  time  of  Domitian,  81  A.D.-96  a.d.,  is  eight.  At  a  later  time 
there  were  thirty-two  :  see  Marquardt,  Staatsvw. ,  2.  452  n.  8,  and  453  n.  2  in 
ed.  of  1876.  a  Tac.  Ann.  4.  5. 

3  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  2.  522  in  ed.  of  1876.       4  Suetonius,  Julius,  24. 


296  WARS  BETWEEN  [chap.  xvii. 

Augustus  kept  any  of  these  legions  permanently  in  his 
service  after  he  had  defeated  the  generals  who  had  made 
them  seems  to  be  doubtful ;  but  he  kept  one  which  had 
been  raised  by  Deiotarus,  king  of  Galatia  in  Asia  Minor. 
That  legion  was  numbered  the  Twenty  Second  and  bore  the 
name  of  Deiotariana:  probably  the  soldiers  in  it  received 
Roman  citizenship  before  it  was  reckoned  as  one  of  the 
regular  legions  of  the  empire.  After  Octavianus  had  taken 
the  name  of  Augustus  there  ensued  a  period  of  a  hundred 
and  four  years  in  which  no  legion  set  foot  in  Italy.  During 
that  long  period,  which  ended  only  when  Galba  marched 
from  Hither  Spain  to  Rome  at  the  end  of  68  a.d.,  all  the 
legions  were  quartered  on  the  frontiers,  and  some  of  them 
remained  in  the  same  station  for  many  years;  thus  for 
example  the  First  Legion,  Germanica,  and  the  Fifth, 
Alauda,  were  in  Germania  Inferior  in  a.d.  14  at  the 
accession  of  Tiberius,  and  were  still  there  fifty  five  years 
later  in  a.d.  69  when  they  helped  to  salute  Vitellius  as 
emperor.1  It  is  obvious  that  legions  stationary  on  the 
frontiers  must  have  filled  up  vacancies  in  their  ranks  with 
recruits  from  regions  near  to  the  places  where  they  were 
stationed,  and  not  from  Italy :  but  it  is  quite  possible  that 
Marquardt  is  right  in  thinking  that  even  in  the  distant 
provinces  so  many  towns  received  Roman  citizenship  and  so 
many  colonies  of  Roman  veterans  were  planted  that  the 
inhabitants  of  the  favoured  towns  and  the  descendants  of 
the  veteran  colonists  sufficed  to  keep  the  legions  up  to  a 
full  complement  of  Roman  citizens.2 

It  is  well  worthy  of  remark  that  though  a  legion  was 
sometimes  recruited  almost  entirely  from  a  particular 
region  in  the  empire,  the  soldiers  in  it  cared  much  for 
their  profession,  and  thought  little  of  the  places  of  their 

1  Tac.  Ann.  1.  31,  and  Hist.  1.  55. 

2  Marquardt,  Staatsvw.,  2.  523,  ed.  of  1876. 


chap,  xvii.]  ARMIES  297 

birth.     They  were  proud  to  be  Roman  soldiers  and  eager 
to    gain   promotion    or    rewards    in    military   service,    and 
detached  themselves  from  their  native  soil.     If  Wars 
it   had   been   otherwise,   wars    between   armies  between 

...  ,       ,  ,  .  . .  ^  armies  did 

might  have  broken  the  empire  into  different  not  break  up 
states:  as  it  was,  when  two  armies  had  fought  the  empire, 
and  decided  which  was  the  stronger,  the  soldiers  in  the 
defeated  army  simply  continued  their  military  career  by 
taking  service  under  the  general  of  their  victorious 
opponents.  The  durability  of  the  empire  of  the  Caesars 
rested  mainly  on  the  fact  that  there  were  no  strong  bodies 
of  men  in  it  except  armies  of  mercenary  soldiers  who  cared 
for  nothing  but  their  profession. 

For  a  hundred  and  ten  years  after  the  accession  of 
Vespasian  the  civilised  world  enjoyed  general  tranquillity 
under  the  paternal  government  of  the  Flavian  Tranquillity 
dynasty  founded  by  Vespasian  and  under  the  and  paternal 
Adoptive  emperors.  Vespasian  did  his  work  of  70  a.  D.- 
conquest  thoroughly,  and  when  it  was  done  l8oAD- 
neither  generals  nor  armies  had  any  stomach  for  rash 
rebellions,  and  senators  were  not  even  suspected  except  in 
the  reign  of  Domitian  of  scheming  to  effect  assassination. 
From  Vespasian  onwards  till  180  a.d.  no  emperor  except 
Domitian  died  unprovided  with  a  competent  and  clearly 
designated  successor:  the  Flavian  dynasty  lasted  twenty 
six  years,  Nerva  who  came  next  after  it  adopted  Trajan, 
Trajan  showed  that  he  intended  his  cousin  Hadrian  to 
succeed  him  by  giving  him  the  command  in  the  war  on  the 
Euphrates,  Hadrian  adopted  Antoninus  Pius,  and  Antoninus 
adopted  Marcus  Aurelius.  All  the  emperors  till  180  a.d.,  not 
even  excepting  Domitian,  attended  in  person  to  the  work  of 
government,  and  from  the  reign  of  Hadrian  they  acquired 
very  efficient  helpers  in  their  fatherly  rule  through  the 
institution  of  a  paid  council  of  jurisconsults,  the  first  civilians 


298  ADOPTIVE  EMPERORS  [chap.  xvii. 

placed  in  high  office  since  the  foundation  of  the  empire. 
After  the  council  was  established  changes  in  the  law  were 
made  no  longer  by  praetorian  edict,  but  only  by  the  emperor 
with  his  skilled  advisers.1  All  the  Flavian  and  Adoptive 
emperors  were  respected  by  the  armies  and  by  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  provinces:  even  in  Rome  only  Domitian  was 
hated,  and  he  alone  met  with  a  violent  death,  murdered  by 
his  own  servants. 

During  the  reigns  of  the  Flavii  and  of  the  Adoptive 
emperors  the  civilised  part  of  the  human  race  was  in 
possession  of  greater  material  wellbeing  than  it 
stagnation  na(^  ever  known :  but  it  produced  fewer  men 
of  private  whose  doings  posterity  cared  to  remember  than 
and  thought,   m  anv  period  of  equal  duration  since  civilisation 

70  A.  D.-  began.  The  emperors  and  their  servants  did 
180  a.d.  . 

nearly  everything  that  was  to  be  done,  and  little 

spontaneous  action  was  left  for  their  subjects  to  undertake. 

Latin  literature  ended  about  120  a.d.,  with  Juvenal,  Tacitus, 

Martial  and  the  younger  Pliny :  Greek  literature  about  a 

generation  later  with    Lucian.      There  was    no   coherent 

community  larger  than  a  city  anywhere  outside  of  Italy : 

and  if  a  city  in  Asia  Minor  wished  to  build  an  aqueduct  or 

a  gymnasium  it  had  to  ask  leave  of  an  imperial  legate  before 

anything  could  be  done.2    The  only  groups  of  men  who 

acted  without  seeking  leave  of  the  imperial  officers  were 

congregations  of  Christians  which  had  grown  up  certainly 

in  some  cities  of  the  eastern  provinces  and  in  Rome,  and 

probably  also  in  other  parts  of  the  empire.     The  emperors 

regarded  their  independence  as  setting  a  bad  example,  and 

occasionally  tried  to  destroy  it  by  punishing  their  leaders : 

Ignatius,  Bishop  of  Antioch,  was  executed  in  the  time  of 

1  On  the  council  of  the  emperor,  see  E.   Cuq  in  Memoires  de  I'lnstitul, 
'Inscriptions,'  vol.  9.     Diet.  Antiq.,  under  the  word  Edictum. 
3  Pliny,  Epist.,  book  10. 


chap,  xvil]  SEPTIMIAN  DYNASTY  299 

Trajan,  and  Polycarp  of  Smyrna  in  the  reign  of  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Outside  of  the  little  Christian  congregations 
thought  and  inquiry  were  dormant :  no  man  discovered 
anything  of  value  in  the  period  of  the  Adoptive  emperors 
except  Galen  the  physician  and  Ptolemy  the  astronomer. 

The  period  of  the  Flavian  dynasty  and  the  Adoptive 
emperors  exhibits  the  best  results  ever  achieved  by  the 
empire  of  the  Caesars.  After  the  death  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  in  180  a.d.  there  were  for  more  dynasty, 
than  a  century  no  emperors  capable  of  ruling  as  I93^*^'" 
benevolent  despots.  The  vices  and  follies  of 
young  Commodus  soon  disgusted  mankind :  on  the  last  day 
of  192  he  was  slain  by  his  servants.  Septimius  Severus,  an 
African,  was  a  good  general  and  had  enough  of  the  qualities 
of  a  statesman  to  enable  him  to  found  a  dynasty  that  lasted 
for  more  than  forty  years.  He  radically  changed  the 
character  of  the  praetorian  cohorts  by  composing  them  of 
the  very  best  soldiers  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the  army. 
As  he  perceived  that  the  great  jurists  were  the  most  trust- 
worthy upholders  of  despotic  government  that  could  be 
found  in  the  empire  he  chose  the  best  man  among  them 
and  made  him  prefect  of  the  praetorian  cohorts,  assigning 
him  at  the  same  time  the  duties  of  first  judge  of  appeal  for 
all  cases  in  the  empire.  Henceforth  the  praetorian  prefect 
was  usually  second  in  power  after  the  emperor,  and  was 
almost  always  a  highly  trained  jurist.  But  one  part  of  the 
conduct  of  Septimius  was  extremely  unwise :  he  greatly 
increased  the  pay  of  the  soldiers  and  neglected  to  keep  them 
under  discipline  and  firm  control.  In  217  an  army  on  active 
service  near  Edessa  murdered  his  son  Caracalla,  who  was 
then  the  reigning  emperor,  and  the  Septimian  dynasty  was 
only  carried  on  till  235  through  the  feeble  reigns  of  the 
loathsome  Elagabalus  and  the  too  respectable  Alexander 
Severus. 


300  PERIOD  OF  FEEBLE  EMPERORS    [chap.  xvii. 

After  Alexander  Severus  had  been  murdered  in  a  camp 
near  the  Rhine,  the  authority  and  power  of  the  emperors 
'-'    ,M  declined  visibly  and  with  little  intermission  for 

Rapid  J 

decline  of  nearly  half  a  century.  Till  253  armies  killed 
authority  emperors  and  made  emperors  as  they  chose,  and 
235A.D.-  m  selecting  a  new  emperor  usually  preferred  a 
man  with  no  Italian  descent  who  had  begun  his 
military  service  at  the  very  bottom  as  an  ordinary  legionary. 
From  240  the  empire  was  attacked  by  Franks,  Alamans, 
Goths  and  Persians.  In  260  Shahpur,  the  second  of  the 
newly  founded  Persian  dynasty  of  the  Sassanidse,  took  the 
old  emperor  Valerian  captive,  and  the  provinces  were  divided 
among  many  local  emperors.  Between  270  and  274  Aurelian 
put  down  the  local  emperors  and  recovered  from  the  bar- 
barians all  the  territory  they  had  occupied  except  the  large 
province  of  Dacia,  which  Trajan  had  annexed  to  the  empire. 
But  even  Aurelian  betrayed  his  opinion  of  the  condition 
of  the  empire  when  he  thought  it  necessary  to  surround  the 
city  of  Rome  with  a  strong  outer  wall  for  defence  :  and  after 
he  had  been  murdered  by  one  of  his  secretaries,  the  emperors 
for  the  next  nine  years  with  the  exception  of  Probus  were  as 
transitory  and  as  weak  as  those  who  followed  immediately 
after  the  extinction  of  the  Septimian  dynasty. 

In  the  year  284  an  army  which  had  been  engaged  in  a 

campaign  against  the  Persians  was  marching  back  towards 

,    Europe    under   the   command    of   an    emperor. 

Accession  of  r  x 

Diocletian,  When  it  arrived  near  the  Bosporus,  the  soldiers 
2^  '  '  discovered  that  the  emperor  whom  they  believed 
to  be  their  commander  had  been  for  some  days  a  corpse,  and 
that  the  orders  they  had  imagined  to  be  issued  by  him  had 
really  been  given  by  his  praetorian  prefect  who  was  also  his 
father-in-law.  The  officers  of  the  army  proposed  and  the 
soldiers  agreed  that  the  officers  should  meet  in  council  and 
select  a  new  emperor.    Diocletian   on  whom  their  choice 


chap,  xvii.]  DIOCLETIAN  301 

fell,  though  his  parents  had  been  domestic  slaves,  proved  to 
be  a  greater  statesman  than  any  emperor  since  Augustus 
and  to  be  the  beginner  of  a  new  system  of  imperial  govern- 
ment. 

Diocletian  began  by  evading  an  obstacle  to  his  projects. 
During  the  nine  years  that  had  elapsed  since  the  murder 
of  Aurelian   the   senate   had   been  raised  by  a   ^.    .   . 

•*  Diocletian 

seemingly  capricious  action  of  the  legions  and  by   absent  from 

the  acquiescence  of  emperors  to  greater  authority    Rome- 

than  it  had  enjoyed  since  Julius  Csesar  crossed  the  Rubicon. 

It  had  been  requested  by  the  legions  to  choose  a  man  to 

fill  the  place  of  Aurelian  and  had  been  allowed  eight  months 

for  consideration  before  it  made  its  choice.     The  man  whom 

it  nominated  had  been  accepted  by  the  legions,  and  after  his 

death  the  strong  emperor  Probus  who  reigned  from  276  to 

282  professed  to  regard  the  senate  as  his  own  superior  in 

dignity  and  authority.1    Diocletian,  on  being  chosen  emperor 

two  years  after  Probus  had  been  murdered  by  his  soldiers, 

resolved  at  once  that  the  new  influence  of  the  senate  should 

not  stand  in  his  way,  and  saw  that  it  could  be  destroyed  by 

neglect.     He  fixed  the  seat  of  his  government  at  Nicomedia 

in  Asia  Minor  near  the  sea  of  Propontis,  and  did  not,  so  far 

as  we  know,  visit  Rome  till  the  nineteenth  year  of  his  reign. 

From  his  time  the  ancient  capital  of  the  empire  ceased  to  be 

a  residence  of  emperors  and  the  influence  of  the  senate  was 

at  an  end. 

The  main  work  of  Diocletian  was  the  initiation  of  great 

improvements  in  the  administrative  system  of  the  empire, 

which  were  carried   further   within  forty  years   after   the 

end  of  his  reign.     At  his  accession  the  machinery  for  the 

control  of  local  governors  was  insufficient.      The  provinces, 

1  Hist.  Aug.  27.  {Probus),  ch.  11.  The  speech  of  Probus  there  inserted 
may  not  be  genuine,  but  the  author  Vopiscus,  who  wrote  within  thirty  years 
of  the  death  of  Probus,  could  not  be  entirely  wrong  about  his  behaviour. 


302  CHANGES  MADE  [chap.  xyii. 

which  under  Augustus  were  only  twenty  two,  had  been 
divided  and  subdivided  till  they  were  more  than  a  hundred. 
_.    .  ^    ,      All  questions  that  arose  in  any  of  the  provinces 

Diocletians  x  . 

administra-  had  to  be  decided  at  the  emperor's  residence  either 
tive  changes,  -^y  one  0f  tne  two  praetorian  prefects  or  by  some  of 
the  officials  of  the  palace  or  in  the  last  resort  by  the  emperor 
himself:  and  the  work  of  deciding  them  was  more  than 
could  be  done  at  any  one  seat  of  government.  Diocletian 
lessened  the  amount  of  business  that  oppressed  the  officials 
of  his  court  at  Nicomedia  by  setting  up  other  centres  of 
imperial  administration.  The  eastern  half  of  the  empire  was 
predominantly  Greek :  the  western  half  was  largely  Latin. 
In  the  third  year  of  his  reign  the  emperor  divided  his 
dominions  into  an  eastern  half  and  a  western  half,  each 
under  an  Augustus :  he  himself  continued  to  rule  the  east 
and  to  supervise  the  whole  from  Nicomedia,  but  he  placed 
the  west  under  the  immediate  control  of  another  Augustus 
resident  at  Milan.  Six  years  later  in  292  he  subdivided  the 
two  halves  of  the  empire.  Both  the  eastern  half  and  the 
western  were  nearly  free  from  enemies  on  the  south,  but  on 
the  north  had  a  frontier  exposed  to  the  barbarians  of  central 
Europe.  Diocletian  resolved  that  the  two  Augusti  should 
undertake  in  future  the  direct  government  only  of  the  more 
tranquil  southern  parts  of  their  halves  of  the  empire,  and 
that  each  should  have  a  Caesar  under  him  to  protect  the 
northern  boundary  where  danger  threatened.  The  Caesar  of 
the  east  governed  the  provinces  on  the  Danube  with  his 
residence  at  Sirmium  about  forty  miles  west  of  the  modern 
Belgrade:  the  Caesar  of  the  west  controlled  Gaul  and 
Britain  from  Treveri  on  the  Mosel,  which  we  usually  call  by 
its  French  name  Treves.  Each  Augustus  and  each  Caesar 
had  a  court  and  officers  to  help  him  with  the  work  of 
government :  in  particular  he  had  a  praetorian  prefect  as  his 
right  hand  man.      In  order  to  lighten  the  labour  of  the 


chap,  xvil]  BY  DIOCLETIAN  303 

praetorian  prefects  the  whole  empire  was  divided  into  twelve 
dioeceses :  the  vicarii,  or  vice  prefects,  who  superintended 
them  could  settle  minor  matters  without  transmitting  them 
for  the  consideration  of  their  superior  officers  the  praetorian 
prefects.1 

Beyond  all  this  Diocletian  hoped  also  to  make  permanent 
rules  for  the  succession  to  the  imperial  authority  and  so  to 
provide  against  the  recurrence  of  wars  between   Diocletian's 
rival    generals.      He    laid    it    down    that    each   provisions 
Augustus  was   to  adopt   his   Caesar,  and   when   succession 
the  Augustus  ceased  to  reign  the  Ca)sar  was  to   of  emPerors- 
become  Augustus  and  was  to  adopt  a  new  Caesar.     As  the 
praetorian   cohorts   had    often   been   presumptuous   during 
vacancies  of  the  imperial  office,  they  were  disbanded,  and 
the  duty  of  guarding  the  emperors  was  entrusted  to  two 
legions  recruited   in   Illyria  which   was  the   birthplace   of 
Diocletian. 

As  long  as  Diocletian  was  emperor,  his  system  of  govern- 
ment worked  well,  because  the  other  Augustus  and  both 
Caesares  conformed  to  his  wishes.     In  305,  when 
he  had   reigned    twenty   years,  he   decided    to   wars 
abdicate.      The    other    Augustus    followed    his   between 

°  t  pretenders. 

example :  the  two  Caesares  became  Augusti,  two 
new  Caesares  were  adopted,  and  for  one  year  more  all  went 
as  Diocletian  had  desired.  But  in  306  on  the  death  of 
Constantius  who  was  then  Augustus  of  the  west  the  question 
who  should  aspire  to  be  emperor  was  settled  not  by  the 
regulations  of  Diocletian  but  by  the  caprice  of  armies.  In  308 
there  were  six  pretenders :  in  312  a  most  sanguinary  war 
gave  possession  of  Italy  and  the  west  to  Constantine  son  of 
Constantius :  in  323  another  fierce  conflict  made  him  master 
of  the  whole  empire.      As  he,  like   Diocletian,  desired   to 

1  For  the  evidence  about  Diocletian's  administrative  changes  see  Gibbon, 
ed.  Bury,  vol.  2,  appendices  10  and  11. 


304  NEW  SYSTEM  [chap.  xvii. 

absent  himself  from  Rome  and  to  have  a  station,  whence 
he  could  command  Europe  or  Asia  at  pleasure,  he  fixed  his 
residence  at  Byzantium  on  the  Bosporus. 

Constantine  reigned  over  Gaul  and  Britain  for  six  years, 
over  western  Europe  for  eleven,  and  over  the  whole  empire 
Constantine  for  fourteen  more.  One  part  of  the  work  of  his 
the  Great.  life  consisted  in  the  completion  of  the  adminis- 
trative changes  which  Diocletian  had  begun,  the  other  and 
more  famous  part  in  his  adoption  of  a  system  of  Christian 
doctrines  as  the  foundation  of  the  religion  of  the  empire, 
and  at  the  end  of  his  life  his  public  expression  of  his  belief 
in  those  doctrines. 

Diocletian  and  Constantine  between   them  transformed 

the   government  of  the  empire.     When  their  innovations 

.  .  were   completed   civil  office  and  military  com- 

Administra-  r  §  ^ 

tive  system  mand  were  kept  distinct  and  were  not  entrusted 
rom337  .  .  to  ^q  same  persons:  the  officials  who,  under 
the  emperor,  performed  the  work  of  government  were 
ranged  in  three  orders,  the  civil  servants,  the  military  com- 
manders, and  the  ministers  of  the  palace.  The  civil  servants 
gathered  the  taxes,  administered  justice,  and  made  the 
emperor's  commands  known  to  his  subjects :  the  military 
commanders  protected  the  frontiers,  and  if  necessary  en- 
forced the  orders  issued  by  the  civil  servants :  the  ministers 
of  the  palace  provided  for  the  splendour  of  the  court, 
aided  the  emperor  in  drawing  up  the  edicts  which  he  issued 
to  civil  servants  and  military  commanders,  and  were  his  ad- 
visers on  any  matters  on  which  he  thought  fit  to  consult  them. 
At  the  head  of  the  civil  service  stood  six  prefects. 
Four  were  praetorian  prefects,  and  the  great  regions  under 
Civil  their   charge,   called   the  prefectures,  embraced 

service.  nearly  the  whole  empire :  the  other  two  prefects 

took  their  titles  from  the  cities  of  Rome  and  Constantinople, 
but  the  prefect  of  Rome  also  ruled  a  good  part  of  Italy. 


chap,  xvil]  OF  GOVERNMENT  305 

Next  after  the  prefects  came  thirteen  vicarii,  whose  districts 
were  called  diceceses:  outside  of  Italy  and  Constantinople 
the  diceceses  were  large  countries :  thus  in  the  prcefectura 
Galliarum  the  diosceses  were  Gaul,  Spain  and  Britain.  The 
last  of  the  great  civilian  officers  were  a  hundred  and  sixteen 
rulers  of  single  provinces :  in  the  provinces  known  as 
Africa,  Asia,  and  Achaia  they  still  bore  the  old  name  of 
proconsul :  elsewhere  they  were  consulares,  correctores  or 
prcesides.  Though  their  titles  varied,  all  alike  were  subject 
to  their  vicarius  and  their  prefect.1 

The  highest  military  commanders  were  eight  magistri 
militum.  Four  had  local  commands,  and  among  them  the 
magister  militum  per  Gallias  had  the  largest 
army  and  the  hardest  task  to  perform,  because 
he  had  to  defend  the  empire  from  the  Germans :  the  other 
four  were  retained  at  court.  After  the  magistri  militum 
came  eight  counts,  charged  with  the  command  in  important 
districts :  below  them  in  rank  were  twenty  five  lesser 
officers  known  as  dukes.  The  army  was  increased  in  size 
till  it  contained  probably  more  than  half  a  million  of  men ; 
but  service  in  it  was  disliked  since  it  now  brought  no  plunder, 
and  the  soldiers  were  as  lethargic  as  all  other  subjects  of  the 
emperor  who  were  not  engaged  in  theological  controversies. 

Seven  ministers  managed  the  imperial  household.  The 
duties  of  the  chamberlain,  the  count  of  the  privy  purse,  and  of 
the  counts  of  the  foot  guards  and  of  the  horse  The 
guards  can  be  understood  from  their  titles,  household. 
The  Count  of  the  Sacred  Largesses  was  treasurer  of  the 
public  revenue,  and  his  title  indicated  that  all  payments 
made  by  the  emperor  came  from  his  voluntary  bounty : 
the  officers  whom  he  directed  as  well  as  paid  were  the 
managers  of  the  mints  and  of  the  factories  of  weavers,  dyers, 

1  Our  authority  for  the  civil  service  and  for  other  branches  of  Constantine's 
system  is  the  Notitia  Dignitatum,  drawn  up  about  400  a.d. 

U 


306  BtTREAUCRACY  [chap.  xvii. 

and  needle  women,  scattered  abroad  throughout  the  empire, 
in  which  ornaments  for  the  palace  and  clothes  for  the 
soldiers  were  produced.  The  Master  of  the  Offices  managed 
the  correspondence  of  the  emperor  with  his  subjects,  and 
presided  over  the  armourers  and  arsenals.  The  Quaestor 
was  the  draftsman  of  the  emperor's  laws  and  speeches  and 
despatches.  All  the  ministers  however  of  the  household 
depended  for  their  relative  importance  more  on  the  share  of 
the  emperor's  confidence  that  they  enjoyed,  than  on  the 
magnitude  of  their  departmental  functions.1 

The  whole  work  of  government  was  done  under  the 
emperor  by  the  civil  servants.  The  prefects  sent  orders  to 
p  f       the  vicarii,  the  vicarii  to  the  governors  of  pro- 

the  civil  vinces,  the  governors  of  provinces  through  their 

servants  transmitted  them  to  the  subjects. 
From  the  commands  given  by  the  lowest  of  the  civil  servants 
the  most  distinguished  subjects  if  they  were  not  themselves 
officials  had  no  appeal  except  to  some  civil  servant  of  a 
higher  grade:  for  the  civil  servants  were  the  only  judges 
in  the  law  courts  and  the  decisions  of  the  highest  civil 
servants  were  absolutely  final. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  imperial  administration  that 
orders  transmitted  in  writing  governed  all  those  actions 
of  the  subjects  which  their  rulers  chose  to  dictate 
to  them :  and  the  same  characteristic  must  be 
present  in  all  systems  of  government  in  which  assemblies 
for  discussion  are  non-existent.  In  France  a  government 
conducted  entirely  in  written  orders  was  set  up  by  Richelieu 
and  Louis  Quatorze  and  lasted  till  the  abdication  of  Napoleon. 
The  French  either  while  it  still  existed  in  full  force  or  when 
its  intensity  was  diminishing  gave  it  the  nickname  of  bureau- 
cratic or  tyranny  of  the  writing  desk.  Although  the  word  is 
a  mongrel,  being  half  French  and  half  Greek,  it  has  survived, 

1  Gibbon,  chap.  17. 


chap,  xvil]  MILITARY  DECADENCE  307 

and  any  government  conducted  by  means  of  written  des- 
patches to  the  exclusion  of  public  discussion  is  still  generally 
called  a  bureaucracy.    Governments  to  which  the  name  can  be 
applied  are  usually  found  in  political  aggregates  that  bear  some 
resemblance  to  the  empire  of  the  Caesars  and  not  elsewhere. 
The  dealings  of  Constantine  with  the  Christians  are  far 
too  numerous  and  varied  to  be  briefly  described.     It  must 
suffice  to  say  that  from  the  beginning  of  his  reign 
in  Gaul  and  Britain  he  protected  his  Christian  dealings 
subjects  from  persecution.     In  325,  soon  after  he  christians 
became  master  of  the  whole  empire,  he  was  patron 
of  an  assembly  of  more  than  three  hundred  bishops  held  at 
Nicaea  not  far  from  Nicomedia  and  his  new  capital  Byzant- 
ium henceforth  called  Constantinople.     The  bishops  came 
mainly  from  the  eastern  part  of  the  empire  to  determine 
theological  questions :  they  adopted  a  system  of  doctrines 
which  from  the  place  of  their  assembly  was  called  Nicene, 
and  in  so  doing  condemned  a  divergent  system  which  was 
advocated  by  Areius,  a  presbyter  of  Alexandria.     Constantine 
ratified  the  Nicene  doctrines,  and  was  for  a  time  zealous  in 
disgracing  those   who   dissented   from   them :    three  years 
later  he  favoured  the  followers  of  Areius,  but  he  had  broken 
entirely  with  the  gods  of  Olympus,  and  to  his  death  upheld 
either  the  Nicene  or  the  Arian  theology.     In  his  last  illness 
he  requested  the  bishops  at  his  palace  of  Nicomedia  to  give 
him  solemn  admission  into  the  Christian  community. 

After  the  death  of  Constantine  the  martial  ardour  of  the 
imperial   armies   declined.     Even   for  fighting  against  one 
another  they  no  longer  felt  their  old  zest,  and  for   Decline  0f 
contending  with   the  barbarians   they    showed   vigour  in  the 
their  incapacity  in  the  year  355  when  Gaul  was  l^miesfroni 
overrun  by  the  Germans.     On  that  occasion  the  337  a.d. 
integrity  of  the  empire  was  restored  by  the  military  genius 
of  Julian,  and  till  395  it  was,  though  often  imperilled  during 


308  POWER  OF  BISHOPS  [chap.  xvii. 

the  reigns  of  weak  sovereigns,  kept  nearly  intact  by  the 
distinguished  abilities  of  the  emperors  Valentinian  and 
Theodosius, 

As   the  emperors  lost  confidence   in   their  armies   they 
needed  support  from  elsewhere:  and  they  found  it  in  the 

communities  of  the  Christians.  The  congregations 
fluence  of  °f  tne  Christians,  which  in  the  time  of  the  adopt- 
bishops,  jve  emperors  had  been  small  local  gatherings  of 

men,  were  now  joined  together  into  churches,  or 
federations  of  congregations  united  by  their  systems  of 
theological  doctrines.  These  churches  were  the  only  bodies 
of  men  in  the  empire  capable  of  any  spontaneous  activity, 
and  were  therefore  so  powerful  that  no  emperor  after 
Constantine  except  the  pagan  Julian  disdained  to  seek  their 
support.  But  for  more  than  forty  years  after  Constantine's 
death  there  were  many  churches :  the  church  of  the  Nicene 
faith  and  the  church  of  the  Arians  were  the  strongest :  the 
rest  were  intermediate  in  doctrines  between  these  two,  or 
divergent  from  both.  In  the  eastern  empire,  more  fond  of 
theological  controversy  than  the  western,  disputes  among 
the  churches  occupied  the  attention  of  all  men.  Till  378 
those  emperors  of  the  east  who  took  most  interest  in  the 
disputes  sought  the  support  of  the  Arian  church,  but  got 
little  advantage  from  it  because  the  Nicene  faith  was  steadily 
gaining  proselytes.  When  Theodosius  became  emperor  in 
379  he  announced  in  an  edict  that  he  believed  strictly  in 
the  Nicene  doctrines,  and  that  he  authorised  the  followers 
of  those  doctrines  to  assume  the  title  of  Catholic  Christians  : 
and  when  in  388  he  conquered  the  western  empire  from  a 
usurper  he  took  similar  measures  there  also.  Henceforth 
there  was  only  one  authorised  church,  and  its  bishops  were 
a  highly  privileged  order,  whose  highest  dignitaries  enjoyed 
as  much  influence  with  the  emperors  as  the  prefects  or  the 


chap,  xvil]  EMPIRE  309 

ministers  of  the  palace.  Ambrose,  Archbishop  of  Milan, 
the  capital  of  the  western  empire,  was  able  to  dictate  a 
policy  to  Theodosius  in  regard  to  a  rebellious  bishop,  and 
to  impose  on  him  a  penance  for  a  cruel  massacre  at 
Thessalonica.1 

The  empire  in  the  time  of  Theodosius  was  threatened 
by  external  enemies,  whose  conquest  of  its  western  half 
will  have  to  be  described  in  the  next  chapter.  The  word 
Before  however  we  consider  the  enemies  of  the  'empire.' 
Caesars,  we  may  pause  to  take  note  how  their  empire  got 
its  name,  and  what  are  the  other  aggregates  of  peoples  to 
which  the  same  name  has  been  given. 

The  Caesars  were  the  first  men  in  European  history  who 
permanently  united  many  dissimilar  peoples  and  cities 
under  a  single  government.  Their  power  to  History  of 
command  was  called  imperium,  and  within  a  theword- 
few  years  after  the  battle  of  Actium  the  same  word  was 
also  used  to  denote  the  dominions  that  obeyed  them.2  The 
aggregate  of  many  peoples  ruled  by  the  Caesars  was  for 
centuries  the  only  concrete  thing  that  was  called  imperium, 
and  so  the  word  imperium  was  afterwards  used  to  denote 
any  aggregate  of  many  peoples  under  one  government,  which 
even  superficially  resembled  the  empire  of  the  Caesars. 
Thus  it  has  come  about  that  we  speak  of  the  empires  of 
Charlemagne,  of  Otto  the  Great,  of  the  Spanish  Habsburgs, 
of  the  Russian,  Chinese  and  German  empires,  of  the  British 
empire  in  India,  and  even  of  a  British  empire  extending 
into  all  continents.  It  is  obvious  that  no  group  of  qualities 
common  to  all  these  things  that  are  called  empires  can  be 
found,   and  therefore  the  word  empire  cannot  be  defined. 

1  Gibbon,  chap.  27.  ed.  Bury,  vol.  3.  174. 

2  Hor.    Carm.,    1.    2.    25.     'Quern   vocet  divum  populua  mentis  Imperi 
rebus  ? ' 


310  EMPIRES  [chap.  xvii. 

It  follows  that  we  cannot  assume,  because  two  things  are 
called  empires,  that  they  bear  any  resemblance  to  one 
another. 

Among  the  many  aggregates  of  peoples  that  are  called 

empires  those  which  seem  to  me  to  be  in  some  important 

respects  like  the  empire  of  the  Csesars  are  the 

most  like  the   Russian  Empire  and  India  under  British  rule. 

empire  of  the   The  materials  of  which  they  were  formed  were 

C  cE  S  3.TS 

peoples  too  weak  to  govern  themselves,  or 
even  to  maintain  dynasties  of  despots  in  established  control 
over  them.  After  the  empires  were  formed  their  rulers 
discovered,  as  the  later  Csesars  discovered,  that  the  easiest 
way  of  governing  them  was  to  establish  civil  servants  in 
such  authority  that  all  subjects  who  were  not  in  office  must 
obey  them  without  question,  and  to  support  the  civil 
servants  with  a  strong  army  of  professional  soldiers.  In 
one  respect,  however,  the  empire  of  the  Caesars  was  far  less 
fortunate  than  either  the  Russian  Empire  or  the  British 
Empire  in  India.  The  Russian  Empire  was  founded  by  men 
already  long  established  as  hereditary  sovereigns  over  the 
European  Russians,  even  then  a  fairly  coherent  people,  and 
the  Indian  Empire  by  Englishmen  subjects  of  the  king  of 
the  English  nation :  hence  the  empires  now  have  as  their 
sovereigns  those  men  who  according  to  well  established 
rules  succeed  as  sovereigns  in  European  Russia  and  in  Great 
Britain,  and  are  comfortably  exempt  from  contests  about 
the  succession.  The  empire  of  the  Coesars  was  founded  by 
a  general  who  was  in  no  sense  a  sovereign,  but  merely 
commander  of  an  army  of  mercenary  soldiers  who  obeyed 
him  because  they  chose.  Hence,  whenever  there  was  no 
emperor  at  Rome,  an  emperor  had  to  be  found  either  by 
agreement  between  one  general  and  all  the  armies  of  the 
empire,  or  by  conflicts  among  many  generals  at  the  head  of 
armies  that  chose  to  accept  them  as  commanders. 


chap,  xvil]  EMPIRES  311 

As  it  has  happened  that  the  name  empire  is  given 
to  some  aggregates  of  peoples  that  are  not  like  the 
empire  of  the  Caesars,  so  it  has   also   chanced 

L  .  .  Rnlers  not 

that  the  name  emperor  is  not  given  to  some   called 
rulers  whose  authority  did   bear  some  resem-   emPerorsj>ut 

J  comparable 

blance  to  the  power  of  the  Caesars.     The  rulers   with  the 
that  I   mean   are    some    of    the    Popes,  from     aesars- 
Gregory  the  Seventh  to   Innocent  the  Fourth,  and  Louis 
Quatorze,  King  of  France. 

The  three  empires  that  I  regard  as  comparable  are  the 
empire  of  the  Caesars,  the  Russian  Empire,  and  India  under 
British  rule.  For  the  making  of  each  of  them  _. 
the  conditions  were  first  the  existence  of  a  mass  comparable 
of  inert  and  disorganised  peoples,  and  second  the  emmres- 
presence  of  an  active  body  of  men  with  a  comparatively 
strong  organisation.  For  the  empire  of  the  Caesars  the 
passive  material  was  firstly  the  civilian  population  of 
Italy,  whose  government,  the  senate,  was  effete,  and 
secondly  the  peoples  of  the  provinces  whose  selfish  and 
arbitrary  rulers  had  been  changed  every  two  or  three 
years.  For  the  Russian  Empire  whose  formation  was 
begun  about  1550  by  Ivan  the  Terrible  and  was  con- 
tinued to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  first 
mass  of  inert  matter  was  a  quantity  of  Tartar  tribes  that 
had  been  brought  westward  from  the  lofty  region  of  the 
Pamirs  on  the  flood  that  started  under  Jinghis  Khan  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  and  had,  when  the  tide  of  con- 
quest ebbed,  been  left  like  a  deposit  of  silt  over  all  the 
country  between  Kief  on  the  Dnieper  and  Tobolsk  on  the 
upper  Obi.  The  active  community  that  by  conquest 
founded  the  Russian  Empire  was  the  Russian  people 
around  Moscow,  which  between  1362  and  1389  under 
Dimitri  Donski  became  nearly  independent  of  the  Tartars, 
between   1462  and  1505  under  Ivan  the   Great  gained  a 


312  EMPIEES  [chap.  xvii. 

strong  government,1  and  between  1550  and  1584  under  Ivan 
the  Terrible  conquered  the  Tartars  from  Azof  to  Tobolsk. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Russians  overpowered  the 
remaining  Tartars  between  Kief  and  Azof,  conquered 
Lithuania,  and  annexed  the  sparse  population  of  Siberia. 
About  1700  under  Peter  the  Great  they  looked  more 
definitely  westward,  and  became  masters  of  many  weakly 
governed  peoples  in  Esthonia,  Livonia,  Ingrelia  including 
the  site  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the  eastern  part  of  Poland.2 
For  the  making  of  the  British  Empire  of  India  the  material 
consisted  of  a  huge  mass  of  Indian  peoples  which  from 
1658  to  1672  had  suffered  grievously  from  the  persecutions 
and  weak  government  of  their  Mohammedan  Mogul 
Emperor  Aurungzebe.  After  1672  the  Hindu  Sivajee  and 
his  successors  had  by  revolt  formed  the  central  part  of  the 
Mogul  Empire  into  Mahratta,  the  Great  Kingdom,  and  gave 
it  a  strong  government:  but  in  1761  it  chanced  that  the 
power  of  the  Mahratta  was  shattered  at  the  great  battle 
of  Paniput  by  a  descendant  of  Aurungzebe,  who  in  spite  of 
his  victory  was  not  able  to  establish  any  systematic  govern- 
ment over  the  peoples  whose  army  he  had  vanquished.3 
The  active  force  that  eventually  dominated  all  the 
peoples  of  India  was  an  English  trading  company  first 
founded  in  1602  and  reinforced  in  1702  by  the  incorpora- 
tion with  it  of  a  second  company  of  like  character.  In 
1765,  four  years  after  the  battle  of  Paniput,  the  English 

1  My  authority  for  these  statements  is  Bernhardy  in  Oncken's  Staaten- 
geschichten.  The  late  Lord  Acton  told  me  that  this  is  the  best  book  for 
beginning  a  study  of  Russian  history,  and  his  successor  as  Regius  Professor 
at  Cambridge,  Mr.  J.  B.  Bury,  confirms  his  opinion.  I  regret  that  I  have 
read  it  only  to  the  reign  of  Ivan  the  Great. 

2  Spruner,  Hist.  Atlas,  second  edition,  published  about  1850,  gives  an 
excellent  map  of  the  conquests  of  the  Russians.  Droysen,  Hist.  Handatlas, 
p.  72,  is  more  elaborate  but  not  so  clear  or  so  comprehensive. 

3  Oxford  Chron.  Tables :  Elphinstone,  Hist,  of  India.  Droysen,  Hist. 
Handatlas,  p.  87. 


chap,  xvil]  EMPIRES  313 

company  acquired  Bengal,  its  first  considerable  territory  in 
India. 

The  government  of  the  empire  of  the  Caesars  was  con- 
structed experimentally.     Till  117  a.d.  when  Trajan  died 
both  the  central  and  the  local  authorities  were 
only  the  emperor,  and  many  officers  in  command   ments  0"f 
of  military  forces.     From  the  reign  of  Hadrian  the  V"-" 

empires. 

and  still  more  from  the  time  of  Septimius  Severus, 
an  increasing  share  in  the  work  of  the  central  government 
was  given  to  civilians,  but  provincial  government  was  left 
to  military  commanders.  From  the  times  of  Diocletian  and 
Constantine  nearly  all  the  work  of  government  properly  so 
called  both  at  the  centre  and  in  the  provinces  was  done  by 
great  civilian  officers  trained  in  the  study  of  the  law :  the 
business  of  the  army,  which  was  increased  in  size,  consisted 
in  defending  the  frontiers  from  the  barbarians  and  in  giving 
support,  if  it  were  needed,  to  the  civilian  rulers.  In  the 
Russian  Empire  and  in  India  I  do  not  attempt  to  follow 
the  processes  by  which  the  governments  attained  their  final 
form :  it  is  probable  that  in  them  the  process  of  experiment 
was  less  laborious  because  their  rulers  knew  something  of 
the  result  of  experiments  made  in  thp.  prrmiro  nf  fho  r'ooon™ 


ERRATUM 

Page  312,  note  1  :  for  Bernhardy  in  Oncken's  Staaten- 
geschichten  read  Bernhardt  Geschichte  Busslands,  Zweiter 
Theil,  Leipzig,  1874. 


312  EMPIRES  [chap.  xvii. 

strong  government,1  and  between  1550  and  1584  under  Ivan 
the  Terrible  conquered  the  Tartars  from  Azof  to  Tobolsk. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Russians  overpowered  the 
remaining  Tartars  between  Kief  and  Azof,  conquered 
Lithuania,  and  annexed  the  sparse  population  of  Siberia. 
About  1700  under  Peter  the  Great  they  looked  more 
definitely  westward,  and  became  masters  of  many  weakly 
governed  peoples  in  Esthonia,  Livonia,  Ingrelia  including 
the  site  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the  eastern  part  of  Poland.2 
For  the  making  of  the  British  Empire  of  India  the  material 
consisted  of  a  huge  mass  of  Indian  peoples  which  from 
1658  to  1672  had  suffered  grievously  from  the  persecutions 
and  weak  government  of  their  Mohammedan  Mogul 
Emperor  Aurungzebe.  After  1672  the  Hindu  Sivajee  and 
his  successors  had  by  revolt  formed  the  central  part  of  the 
Mogul  Empire  into  Mahratta,  the  Great  Kingdom,  and  gave 
it  a  strong  government:  but  in  1761  it  chanced  that  the 
power  of  the  Mahratta  was  shattered  at  the  great  battle 
of  Paniput  by  a  descendant  of  Aurungzebe,  who  in  spite  of 
his  victory  was  not  able  to  establish  any  systematic  govern- 
ment over  the  peoples  whose  army  he  had  vanquished.8 
The    active    force    that    eventually    dominated    all    the 


chap,  xvil]  EMPIEES  313 

company  acquired  Bengal,  its  first  considerable  territory  in 
India. 

The  government  of  the  empire  of  the  Caesars  was  con- 
structed experimentally.     Till  117  a.d.  when  Trajan  died 
both  the  central  and  the  local  authorities  were 
only  the  emperor,  and  many  officers  in  command   ments  0f 
of  military  forces.     From  the  reign  of  Hadrian  the  three 

empires. 

and  still  more  from  the  time  of  Septimius  Severus, 
an  increasing  share  in  the  work  of  the  central  government 
was  given  to  civilians,  but  provincial  government  was  left 
to  military  commanders.  From  the  times  of  Diocletian  and 
Constantine  nearly  all  the  work  of  government  properly  so 
called  both  at  the  centre  and  in  the  provinces  was  done  by 
great  civilian  officers  trained  in  the  study  of  the  law :  the 
business  of  the  army,  which  was  increased  in  size,  consisted 
in  defending  the  frontiers  from  the  barbarians  and  in  giving 
support,  if  it  were  needed,  to  the  civilian  rulers.  In  the 
Russian  Empire  and  in  India  I  do  not  attempt  to  follow 
the  processes  by  which  the  governments  attained  their  final 
form :  it  is  probable  that  in  them  the  process  of  experiment 
was  less  laborious  because  their  rulers  knew  something  of 
the  result  of  experiments  made  in  the  empire  of  the  Csesars 
and  in  the  Byzantine  Empire,  descended  from  the  empire  of 
the  Csesars.  It  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  both  in  the 
Russian  Empire  and  in  India  during  the  nineteenth  century 
the  government  bore  an  extremely  close  resemblance  to 
the  government  established  by  Diocletian  and  Constantine 
for  their  dominions.  Thus  we  may  say  that  in  all  the  three 
empires  founded  by  a  strongly  organised  body  of  men  through 
conquest  of  disorganised  peoples  the  government  in  its  final 
form  was  conducted  by  a  single  man  at  the  head,  with  the 
aid  of  a  great  body  of  trained  civil  servants,  to  whom  and 
through  whom  orders  were  transmitted  in  writing,  and  with 
the  support  of  a  strong  standing  army  of  professional  soldiers. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

BARBARIAN   CONQUERORS   OF   CIVILISED   PEOPLES 

In  the  time  of  Theodosius  all  men  in  Europe  outside  the 
empire  were  grouped  in  tribes,  that  is  to  say,  in  societies 
living  in  the  open  country  employed  in  military,  agricultural 
and  pastoral  pursuits,  and  ignorant  of  life  in  towns.  All  the 
tribes  in  the  area  bounded  by  the  Rhine,  the  Danube,  and 
the  Vistula  were  of  German  race.  In  the  country  to  the 
north  of  the  Black  Sea  Huns  were  arriving  as  barbarous 
nomads  from  the  lofty  region  of  the  Pamirs  in  central  Asia : 
to  the  east  of  the  Vistula  were  Slavs,  and  on  both  sides  of 
the  entrance  of  the  Baltic  Sea  were  Scandinavians. 

Tribes  are  a  sort  of  protoplasm  out  of  which  in  the  course 

of  many  generations  more  definite  bodies  politic  are  made  : 

but  they  themselves  may  have  little  of  durable 

Tribes.  J  J 

shape  and  structure.  Groups  of  men  are 
cantons,  groups  of  cantons  are  tribes,  groups  of  tribes  are 
hordes  or  small  kingdoms :  but  while  men  live  in  a  tribal 
condition  any  of  their  groupings  may  break  up  and  form 
new  groupings  unlike  the  old.  Hence  it  is  often  impossible 
to  trace  the  filiation  of  tribal  groups,  and  we  cannot  usually 
have  anything  like  a  continuous  history  of  men  in  a  tribal 
condition. 

If  tribesmen  remain  surrounded  by  no  human  beings 
other  than  tribesmen,  there  arises  out  of  their  chaotic 
confusion  some  kind  of  order,  and  in  the  course  of  ages 
bodies  politic  are  formed  out  of  their  descendants.     If 

314 


chap,  xviil]   END  OF  THE  WESTEEN  EMPIRE  315 

tribesmen  mingle  with  men  who  are  not  tribesmen  but  live 
in  towns  and  have  the  habits  and  appliances  of  town  life, 
their  career  as  tribesmen  is  ended.     In  Europe   „   . 

r       Various 

before  the  age  of  Theodosius  one  German  tribe   fortunes  of 

of  Salian  Franks  had  already  gone  into  a  Koman        es' 

province,  and  shortly  after  his  death  about  half  of  the  whole 

population  of  Germany  followed  its  example.     In  the  present 

chapter  we  shall  consider  the  fate  of  those  German  tribes 

which  conquered  Roman  provinces  and  settled  among  the 

subjects   of   the   Caesars   and    there    lost   themselves.      In 

the  following  chapter  we  shall  observe  what  happened  to 

the  German  tribes  that  did  not  mix  with  Romans,  to  the 

Scandinavian   tribes   and   to  one  or   two   other  bodies   of 

somewhat   similar   character  which  formed   themselves   in 

the  Spanish  peninsula. 

From  the  year  400,  when  Theodosius  had  only  been  dead 

five  years,  Italy  was  threatened   by  the   Visigoths   under 

Alaric  from  the  river  Save  in  Pannonia.     In  406 

the  imperial   armies  were  withdrawn  from  the   western 

Rhine  to  give  their  services  in  Italy :  the  Germans   emPire» 
.  .  400-476. 

came   swarming  into  Gaul   and  Spain,  and  the 

garrison  of  Britain  set  up  a  usurping  emperor  and  crossed 

to  the  continent  to  try  what  it  could  gain.     By  411  nothing 

was  left  to  the  western  empire  except  Italy  and  Africa  and 

some  fragments   of  Gaul   and   Spain.     In   429  Africa  was 

conquered    by   Vandals   who    came   from    Spain;    in   476 

Italy  itself  was  conquered   by  a   barbarian  king,  and   the 

empire  of  the  Ca3sars  in  western  Europe  was  at  an  end. 

As  the  Germans  not  only  conquered  the  western  empire 

but  settled  in  it,  they  were  compelled  also  to  try  to  govern 

it.     Each  band  of  settlers  needed  some  ruling  agency  to 

control  the  settlers  themselves  and  the  conquered  Romans 

among  whom  they  established  their  dwellings.     Hence  the 

two   centuries   after    the    death   of  Theodosius  saw   more 


316  THE  GERMANS  [chap,  xviii. 

grouping  of  men  under  new  governments  than  any  period 
of  like  duration  in  European  history.  The  new  groupings 
_    G  of  men  under  governments  cannot  well  be  called 

in  the  west-  states  because  they  lacked  stability.  They  were 
em  empire.      nQj.    communjties    because   there   was    little  in 

common  between  the  German  ruling  race  and  the  subject 
Romans:  some  of  them  could  scarcely  be  called  political 
bodies  because  they  were  so  misshapen.  All  however  till 
the  year  800  were  ruled  by  men  who  bore  the  title  of  king, 
and  till  that  time  we  may  call  them  kingdoms. 

The  facts,  which  determined  that  the  German  kingdoms 
established  on  territory  which  had  been  Roman  must  be 
Their  unstable   and  incoherent,   are   not  far  to   seek, 

conditions.  The  conquering  Germans  were  rude  tribesmen, 
valiant  fighters  in  war,  but  in  peace  rustic  peasants :  during 
a  campaign  they  obeyed  their  commanders  because  obedience 
was  necessary  to  success :  in  time  of  peace  in  their  German 
homes  they  had  no  government  except  that  which  they 
themselves  exercised  in  assemblies  for  deliberation  or  in 
local  courts  for  the  administration  of  justice.  The  subject 
Romans  were  incapable  of  fighting,  their  men  of  substance 
were  townsmen,  accustomed  to  arts,  appliances,  and  luxuries 
of  civilised  life,  and  so  thoroughly  over  governed  for  many 
generations  that  even  in  the  works  of  peace  they  could  do 
nothing  except  as  they  were  bidden.  Beside  all  this  the 
German  settlers  were  few  in  comparison  with  their  Romanised 
subjects,  and  in  many  of  their  kingdoms  they  differed  from 
them  in  their  religion.  The  political  results  that  followed 
from  the  settlement  of  the  Germans  in  the  western  empire 
will  be  made  sufficiently  manifest  if  we  observe  what 
happened  in  Gaul,  in  Spain  and  in  Italy. 

The  German  peoples  who  settled  in  Gaul  were  Salian 
Franks,  Burgundians,  and  Visigoths.  The  Salian  Franks 
obtained  a  settlement  in  the  extreme  north,  in  a  region 


chap,  xviil]  IN  THE  EMPIRE  317 

called  Toxandria  between  the  Scheldt  and  the  Rhine  as  early 
as  355-361  when  Julian  was  Caesar  in  Gaul :  between  407  and 
419  the  Burgundians  got  some  territory  in  the  G  . 
south  east,  and  the  Visigoths  occupied  Aquitaine  400  a.  d.- 
in  the  south  west.  By  the  year  486  the  Salian  S34 
Franks,  the  Burgundians,  and  the  Visigoths  had  divided  all 
Gaul  among  them  and  it  was  clear  that  Chlodovech  or  Clovis 
who  had  then  been  king  of  the  Salian  Franks  for  five  years 
was  stronger  than  either  of  his  rivals.  In  496  he  was  further 
strengthened  when  he  and  the  chief  men  of  his  German 
followers  became  Catholic  Christians,  and  thus  adopted  the 
religion  of  the  subject  Romans :  in  507  he  conquered 
Aquitaine  from  the  Visigoths,  and  before  his  death  in  511 
he  received  the  submission  of  the  Ripuarian  Franks,  who 
held  territory  on  the  Rhine,  some  of  it  probably  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  river  and  therefore  in  Germany.1  In 
534  two  of  his  sons  overpowered  the  King  of  Burgundia,  and 
Salian  princes  ruled  over  all  Gaul  and  over  a  strip  of 
Germany  beyond  the  Rhine. 

Chlodovech  bequeathed  separate  kingdoms  to  his  four 
sons,  and  till  613  there  were  at  most  times  four  Gallic 
kingdoms  governed  by  Salian  princes.  Those  Gaul,  534- 
kingdoms  which  lay  remote  from  the  Rhine  ^- 
were  entirely  incoherent.  The  Germans  in  them  were 
scattered  and  could  not  meet  in  assemblies :  the  Romanised 
Celts  were  unable  to  do  anything  but  submit  to  any  master 
who  claimed  their  obedience :  and  when  the  kings  in  the 
three  western  kingdoms  of  Gaul  broke  up  their  dominions 
by  absurd  transfers  of  territory  none  of  their  subjects 
remonstrated.  The  kingdom  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhine 
which  included  the  territory  that  had  belonged  to  the 
Ripuarian  Franks  and  from  about  600  was  known  as 
Austrasia,  or  the  East  land,  was  different  from  the  rest, 

1  Gregory  of  Tours,  2.  40  =  2.  xxix  in  Omont's  edition. 


318  GAUL,  SPAIN,  [chap,  xviii. 

because  it  had  territory  in  Germany,  was  constantly  re- 
cruited with  new  German  immigrants,  and  was  gradually 
transformed  into  something  like  a  German  tribe.  In  613 
the  Austrasian  nobles,  called  leudes,  set  up  a  mayor  of  the 
palace  of  their  own  choice  as  their  ruler,  and  though  after 
that  date  the  Austrasians  sometimes  allowed  a  Salian  prince 
to  be  called  their  king,  their  effective  rulers  were  the  mayors 
of  the  palace.  The  western  kingdoms  of  Gaul  were  joined 
together  in  628  under  one  king,  and  after  that  time  western 
Gaul  was  sometimes  one  kingdom,  sometimes  two  or  three : 
but  even  when  it  was  under  a  single  sovereign  it  was  not 
so  strong  as  Austrasia.  In  687  Pippin  mayor  of  Austrasia 
defeated  Ebroin  mayor  of  the  western  kingdom,  whose  king 
was  a  Salian,  at  the  great  battle  of  Testry  between  Amiens 
and  St  Quentin :  and  thenceforth  for  three  generations  the 
ruler  of  all  the  Franks  in  Gaul  was  an  Austrasian  mayor  of 
the  palace, 

Spain  was  invaded  between  408  and  415  by  Suevi, 
Vandals,  Alans,  and  Visigoths.  In  419  the  Visigoths  went 
backward  over  the  Pyrennees  into  Aquitaine,  and 
408  a.d.-  in  429  the  Vandals  went  onward  into  Africa,  so 
713  a.d.  that  from  429  the  Spanish  peninsula  was  divided 
between  the  Alans  and  the  Suevi.  But  the  Visigoths  in 
Aquitaine  grew  in  strength,  and  Euric  who  became  their 
king  in  466  advanced  into  Spain  in  great  force,  and  in 
477  became  ruler  of  nearly  the  whole  peninsula:  after  507, 
when  Aquitaine  was  conquered  by  the  Salian  Chlodovech, 
the  Visigoths  held  no  territory  of  much  importance  outside 
of  Spain,  and  their  kings  fixed  their  residence  at  Toledo. 
Spain,  being  traversed  by  many  ranges  of  mountains,  is  by 
nature  hard  to  keep  under  the  control  of  a  single  ruler : 
while  it  belonged  to  the  Visigoths,  local  governors  were 
almost  independent ;  the  nobles  elected  their  kings,  and,  if 
they  disliked  their  government,  got  rid  of  them  by  murder 


chap,  xviii.]  ITALY  319 

or  by  open  rebellion.1  One  important  attempt  to  strengthen 
the  kingly  power  was  made  in  587,  when  King  Reccared 
abjured  the  Arian  form  of  Christian  doctrine,  and  took  in 
its  stead  the  Catholic  form,  which  was  the  religion  of  the 
Roman  part  of  his  subjects :  it  ended,  however,  not  in 
strengthening  the  Visigothic  kings,  but  in  making  the 
bishops  as  imperious  as  the  nobles  had  been  rebellious. 
After  680  Spain  was  ruled  less  by  kings  than  by  prelates.2 
In  710  bands  of  Mohammedan  Moors  and  Arabs  crossed 
over  from  Africa,  and  by  713  made  a  conquest  of  all  Spain 
except  some  mountainous  regions  in  the  north.  The  dis- 
tricts which  they  neglected  to  reduce  were  firstly  Asturias 
and  Cantabria  situate  on  the  shore  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay 
and  separated  from  the  rest  of  Spain  by  a  range  of  jagged 
mountains,  now  famous  for  their  beautiful  scenery,  and 
secondly  some  valleys  on  the  southern  slope  of  the 
Pyrennees  about  Jaca  and  Pampeluna.  In  these  refuges 
four  bands  of  Christian  fugitives  were  able  to  live  apart 
from  the  Moors.  These  little  bands  of  refugees  were  the 
first  groups  of  men  formed  in  western  Europe  since  the 
coming  of  the  Germans  that  had  common  aims  and 
interests  and  territory  which  they  cared  to  defend,  and 
therefore  deserved  to  be  called  political  communities. 

The  first  settlement  of  Germans  in  Italy  was  made  in 
493  by  the  Ostrogoths.     Their  king  Theodoric  had  been 
educated    at    the   court    of  Constantinople    to 
which  he  had  been  sent  as   a  hostage  in  his  493  a.d.- 
childhood,   and   was   anything  but  a  barbarian   774    '    ' 
or  a  destroyer.     When   he  and  his  Gothic  warriors  con- 
quered  Italy   in   493   he  retained  the  Roman  method  of 
administration  under  a  proetorian  prefect  and  correctores 
for  the  government  of  the  vanquished  Italians,  who  con- 
stituted nine  tenths  or  more  probably  nineteen  twentieths 

1  Oman,  The  Dark  Ages,  131-144.  2  Ibid.,  221-2H4. 


320  ITALY  [chap,  xviii. 

of  his  subjects:  his  Goths,  who  in  comparison  with  the 
Italians  were  but  a  handful,  settled  as  yeomen  on  lands 
that  he  assigned  to  them,  and  were  permitted  to  manage 
their  own  affairs  almost  as  freely  as  if  they  had  been  in 
Germany,  provided  that  they  were  ready  to  serve  in  war 
when  they  were  summoned.  Under  Theodoric  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Italians  was  as  Roman  as  it  had  been  under 
Constantine,  but  more  efficient  than  it  had  been  since  the 
reign  of  the  emperor  Theodosius.  At  the  death  of  Theodoric 
the  Ostrogoth  in  526,  his  kingdom,  which  he  had  ruled  with 
justice  and  power  for  thirty  three  years,  passed  to  a  feeble 
successor.  Between  534  and  555  it  was  conquered  by 
Belisarius  and  Narses,  generals  in  the  service  of  Justinian, 
the  emperor  who  reigned  at  Constantinople,  and  when  the 
conquest  was  completed  it  was  ruled  for  twelve  years  by 
officials  of  the  eastern  Roman  empire.  Thus  till  567  the 
Italians  were  governed  continuously  under  the  methods 
of  administration  which  Diocletian  and  Constantine  had 
established.  But  then  hordes  of  Germans  more  barbaric 
than  any  who  had  yet  entered  the  empire  gathered  beyond 
the  Alps:  in  the  next  year  568  they  advanced  southward 
under  Alboin,  king  of  the  Lombards,  and  conquered  all 
Italy  except  the  districts  round  Ravenna  and  Rome  and 
the  promontories  which  jut  out  in  the  south  towards  Sicily 
and  towards  Greece.  The  new  comers  were  not  a  single 
tribe  under  an  established  king  but  many  bands  of 
adventurers  under  a  captain  chosen  by  them  to  lead 
them  to  victory:  within  seven  years  of  their  arrival  in 
Italy  the  country  was  divided  into  thirty  independent 
duchies,  and  each  duke  ruled  as  he  chose.  In  584  the 
dukes  elected  a  king,  and  for  nearly  two  centuries  after- 
wards there  was  a  Lombard  kingdom :  but  its  kings  were 
elected  by  the  nobles,  and  were  no  more  capable  than  the 
Visigothic  kings  in  Spain  of  establishing  and  maintaining 


chap,  xviil]  BISHOPS  OF  ROME  321 

orderly  government.  In  752  and  772  some  follies  com- 
mitted by  Lombard  kings  furnished  powerful  Austrasian 
rulers  with  pretexts  for  intervening  in  Italy,  and  in  774 
the  last  of  the  Lombards  surrendered  his  dominions  to  a 
conqueror  from  beyond  the  Alps. 

While  the  administrative  system  of  the  Caesars  was 
perishing,  and  the  Germans  were  showing  their  inability 
to    establish    orderly   governments    to    take   its   „ 

*     °  Growing 

place,  the  Catholic  clergy  gained  a  ruler  belong-  power  of  the 
ing  to  their  own  body.  It  has  been  mentioned  R^eps  of 
already1  that  in  the  year  400  Alaric  king  of  4">A.D.- 
the  Visigoths  was  threatening  Italy.  In  408  he 
advanced  into  the  country ;  thrice  he  blockaded  Rome,  and 
in  410  he  captured  it.  The  miseries  of  the  blockade  and  the 
terror  of  pillage  drove  the  more  important  men  and  their 
families  to  flee  away:  and  when  the  Visigoths  in  412  with- 
drew from  Italy  into  Gaul  and  Spain  the  bishop  Innocent 
the  First  was  by  far  the  greatest  dignitary  in  the  city 
which  had  once  been  capital  of  the  civilised  world.  In  421 
Valentinian  the  Third,  who  was  still  emperor  of  Italy  and 
Africa,  gave  the  bishops  of  Rome  a  power  of  appellate 
jurisdiction  over  disputes  about  matters  ecclesiastical  which 
arose  in  his  dominions.2  In  452  bishop  Leo  the  First  was 
sent  as  ambassador  from  a  western  emperor  to  Attila  the 
Hun,  a  far  more  destructive  conqueror  than  any  of  the 
German  invaders,  and  succeeded  in  diverting  him  from  his 
project  of  marching  into  Italy.  After  the  time  of  Leo  the 
bishops  of  Rome  were  ordinarily  called  Popes,  and  they 
were  recognised  throughout  the  west  of  Europe  as  the 
spiritual  chieftains  of  the  Catholic  Christians ;  but  none  of 
them  performed  any  memorable  achievement  till  Gregory 
the  Great  in  596  sent  his  missionary  Augustine  to  Britain 

1  See  page  315. 

-  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  1.  85. 

X 


322  AUSTRASIAN  [chap,  xviii. 

and  so  prepared  the  way  for  the  conversion  of  the  English 
to  the  Catholic  doctrines. 

The  work  done  by  the  Germans  in  the  provinces  of  the 
western  empire  between  400  and  687  was  this.  They 
Summary,  l°st  the  power  to  govern  themselves  in  tribal 
400-687.  assemblies  for  which  their  forefathers  in  their 

German  homes  had  been  conspicuous.  They  destroyed  the 
machinery  of  government  that  the  emperors  had  laboriously 
established,  and  nearly  all  institutions  that  had  grown  up 
in  the  empire  except  the  power  of  the  Catholic  prelates: 
and  none  of  them  except  the  Austrasians  succeeded  in 
setting  up  anything  like  an  orderly  government  to  take 
the  place  of  what  they  had  broken  to  fragments. 

After  the  battle  of  Testry  in  687  the  Austrasian  Franks 
were  the  strongest  people  in  western  Europe :  and  between 
Conquests  687  and  803  under  very  able  rulers  descended 
made  by  the  from  Pippin  the  victor  of  Testry  they  made 
Franks,  conquests  with  wonderful  rapidity.     Before  730 

687-803.  tjiey  na(j  conquered  all  the  German  tribes  except 

the  Saxons :  in  732  under  Karl  Martel,  son  of  Pippin,  they 
repelled  a  dangerous  invasion  of  Mohammedan  Moors  from 
Spain :  in  752  Pippin  the  Short,  son  of  Karl  Martel,  took, 
with  the  approval  of  two  Popes,  the  title  of  King  of  the 
Franks  which  had  hitherto  belonged  to  a  Salian  prince: 
and  between  754  and  803,  under  Pippin  the  Short  and 
Charlemagne,  the  Austrasians  conquered  the  Saxons,  the 
northern  half  of  Italy,  and  a  strip  of  Spain  to  the  north 
of  the  river  Ebro.  In  800  Charlemagne  being  master  of 
Europe  from  the  Ebro  almost  to  the  Elbe,  and  from  the 
Germanic  Ocean  to  the  Tiber  received  from  Pope  Leo  the 
Third  whom  he  had  restored  to  authority  in  Rome,  and 
from  his  army  the  title  of  Emperor. 

Though  Charlemagne  borrowed  the  title  of  emperor  that 
was  most  constantly  used  by  the  later  Caesars,  his  empire 


chap,  xvin.]  EMPIEE  323 

was  unlike  theirs  in  origin,  in  structure,  and  in  government. 
The  empire  of  the  Caesars  was  founded  by  a  general  in 
command  of  an  army  of  professional  soldiers : 
the  empire  of  Charlemagne  was  founded  by  a  Austrasian 
mayor  elected  by  nobles  to  lead  free  warriors  emPlre- 
who  were  tribesmen  first  and  soldiers  afterwards.  The 
Caesars  from  first  to  last  were  upheld  by  a  standing  army 
of  mercenaries :  the  Austrasian  rulers  usually  had  no  army 
except  in  the  summer,  and  before  they  could  get  an  army 
even  in  the  summer  they  must  win  the  approval  of  local 
chieftains  for  the  work  for  which  the  army  was  wanted. 
The  empire  of  the  Caesars  contained  no  local  communities 
with  a  will  of  their  own:  in  the  empire  of  Charlemagne 
the  strongest  elements  were  the  great  Austrasian  tribe  and 
other  German  tribes  which  had  till  recently  been  independent 
under  rulers  of  their  own.  The  government  in  the  empire 
of  the  Caesars  was  carried  on  by  a  host  of  trained  civilians 
from  the  praetorian  prefects  downwards,  all  acting  with  the 
discipline  of  an  army  and  the  precision  of  a  machine : 
Charlemagne  had  for  the  work  of  government  his  own  un- 
rivalled energy,  but  beyond  that  no  regular  organs  except 
for  central  government  tribal  assemblies  of  local  chieftains 
held  twice  in  the  year  and  for  local  government  officers 
called  counts  and  dukes  ruling  great  districts  on  his  behalf. 
The  counts  and  dukes  had  no  regular  supervisors  set  over 
them :  only  intermittent  and  imperfect  control  of  their 
doings  was  exercised  by  occasional  commissioners  known  as 
Missi  Dominici,  the  Messengers  of  the  Lord  Emperor. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  Austrasian  empire  had  no  such 
securities  against  disruption  as  the  empire  of  the  Caesars. 
It  had  local  component  parts  capable  of  forming  independent 
communities,  and  it  had  no  standing  army.  Soon  after  the 
death  of  Charlemagne  in  814  his  son,  Louis  le  Debonnaire, 
divided  his  dominions  into  kingdoms  for  his  sons,  keeping 


324  AUSTEASIAN  EMPIRE  [chap,  xviii. 

for  himself  the  title  of  emperor,  and  hoping  also  to  retain 
a  general  control   over  his  vicegerents.     The    sons  fought 

against  one  another  and  against  their  father. 
Austrasian  After  the  death  of  Louis  in  840  his  eldest  son 
divided  into  Lothair,  king  of  Italy  and  emperor,  tried  to 
three  king-      exert    effective    authority    over    his    brothers, 

Ludwig  king  of  Germany  and  Karl  king  of  Gaul. 
In  842  Ludwig  and  Karl  with  the  armies  of  their  kingdoms 
met  at  Strassburg  to  form  an  alliance  against  Lothair :  the 
exact  words  of  the  oaths  sworn  by  the  kings  and  of  the  oath 
sworn  by  the  armies  have  been  preserved,  and  are  the  oldest 
monuments  that  we  possess  of  the  national  languages  of 
France  and  Germany.1  The  kings  of  Germany  and  of  Gaul, 
which,  since  it  acted  unitedly  and  had  a  language  of  its 
own,  we  must  henceforth  call  France,  were  successful.  In 
843  a  treaty  concluded  at  Verdun  confirmed  their  independ- 
ence and  defined  their  territories :  Lothair  kept  only  Italy 
and  a  strip  of  land  between  the  kingdoms  of  France  and 
Germany,  together  with  the  title  of  emperor,  which  no 
longer  gave  him  any  authority  outside  his  own  kingdom. 

The  treaty  of  Verdun  set  the  Germans  free  from  subjec- 
tion to  a  government  which  also  ruled  descendants  of 
Germany,  Roman  provincials.  After  its  conclusion  the 
843-936.  German  kingdom  was  a  union  of  pure-blooded 

and  kindred  tribes  not  unlike  the  union  of  tribes  that 
existed  in  England  at  the  same  period  under  iEthelwulf, 
son  of  Egbert :  the  chief  difference  between  the  German  and 
the  English  unions  of  tribes  was  that  the  several  German 
tribes  were  somewhat  more  inclined  than  the  English  tribes 
to  become  independent.  The  Germans,  however,  for  nearly 
a  century  after  they  had  asserted  their  freedom  from 
control  by  an  emperor,  needed  to  act  together  in  repelling 

1  Nithard,  3.  5,  in  Mon.  Germ.  Hitt.,  vol.  2,  665,  666.  Commentary  on 
the  French  texts  in  Diez,  Altromanische  Sprachdenkmale,  3-14. 


chap,  xviil]  FIEFS  325 

at  first  Slavic  barbarians  from  beyond  the  Elbe,  then 
Norsemen  who  came  by  sea,  and  after  900  the  terrible 
Hungarian  marauders.  Consequently  whenever  they  could 
get  a  strong  king,  they  obeyed  him :  when  their  king  was 
feeble,  they  fell  apart,  but  never  into  more  than  two 
or  three  kingdoms  or  five  separate  duchies.  Henry  Duke 
of  Saxony,  elected  in  918  by  only  two  duchies  to  be  king, 
restored  kingly  government  over  all  Germany,  and  left  it  at 
his  death  in  936  to  be  carried  to  greater  power  by  his  son 
Otto  the  Great. 

In  France  and  Italy  the  German  immigrants  had  always 
been    few    in     comparison    with    the    older    populations 
descended  from  the  subjects  of  the  Csesars :  by 
843  neither  country  contained  any  considerable   France  and 
element  that  was  distinctly  German.     In  both   Italyfrom 

.  9°°. 

countries  the  kings  being  Austrasian  Franks 
descended  from  Charlemagne  were  foreigners  to  their 
subjects;  on  the  other  hand  the  local  rulers  and  land 
owners,  whom  the  Austrasian  sovereigns  had  invested  with 
offices  or  endowed  with  estates,  had  in  some  degree  assimil- 
ated themselves  to  their  surroundings :  in  France  they 
were  becoming  Frenchmen  and  in  Italy  Italians.  The 
result  was  that  the  inhabitants  were  more  inclined  to  be 
led  by  counts  and  dukes  and  landlords  than  to  obey  their 
kings :  and  before  900  both  France  and  Italy  were  broken 
into  a  multitude  of  small  independent  communities  com- 
monly called  fiefs  or  feudal  principalities.1  In  each  fief  the 
ruler  and  the  ruled  had  in  the  main  the  same  desires  and 
aims,  and  held  spontaneously  together:  and  thus  the  fiefs 
deserve,  though  in  a  less  degree  than  the  tribes  in  Spain,  to 
be  called  political  communities. 

Otto   the   Great   in  the   early  years   of  his   reign  made 
Germany  by  far  the  strongest  power  in  Europe  :  but  in  951 

1  See  note  at  the  end  of  the  chapter. 


326  SAXON  [chap,  xviii. 

he  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  intervene  by  force  in 
Italy,  and  in  962  by  being  crowned  king  of  Italy  and  Roman 
The  Saxon  emperor  he  sowed  the  seeds  of  trouble  for 
empire.  Germany  and  its  future   sovereigns.     His   son 

and  grandson,  both  named  Otto,  delighting  to  be  in  Italy 
neglected  Germany,  and  Henry  the  Third  who  reigned  from 
1039  to  1056  was  the  last  of  their  successors  who  was  able 
to  keep  undisputed  control  of  both  Germany  and  Italy. 
None  of  the  emperors  from  Otto  the  Great  to  Henry  the 
Third  had  to  deal  with  popes  strong  enough  to  oppose  them 
effectively.  During  their  times  the  popes  were  either 
elected  by  the  people  and  clergy  of  Rome  or  nominated  by 
emperors :  those  elected  by  the  Romans  were  usually  weak 
or  vicious,  and  those  nominated  by  the  emperors  were 
deferential.  But  in  1059  one  of  the  popes  decreed  that  his 
successors  should  be  elected  by  the  cardinal  bishops.  These 
cardinals  were  officials  of  experience  in  business,  and  were 
likely  to  be  good  electors  of  popes,  just  as  in  the  time  of  the 
Caesars  the  great  officers  of  the  army  or  of  the  civil  service 
and  the  army  combined  were  the  best  electors  of  a  Roman 
emperor.  From  1059  the  popes  advanced  in  power,  and 
they  opposed  the  emperors,  thinking  that  they  themselves 
and  not  the  emperors  were  the  proper  inheritors  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  Csesars  over  western  Europe.  From 
1073  the  popes  found  helpers  sometimes  in  rebellious  pre- 
lates and  princes  in  Germany,  sometimes  in  the  regenerated 
towns  of  Italy.  In  1250  one  of  them  vanquished  the  last 
successor  of  Otto  the  Great :  not  only  was  the  empire 
destroyed  and  Italy  separated  from  Germany,  but  there 
was  no  longer  a  single  German  kingdom,  and  Germany 
broke  up  into  tribes  or  principalities  which  were  not 
brought  under  one  sovereign  till  the  nineteenth  century. 

Now  that  I  have  sketched  the  characters  of  the  Austrasian 
empire  and  the  Saxon  empire  I  may  point  out  the  features 


chap,  xviil]  EMPIRE  327 

in  which  those  empires  were  alike.  Each  of  them  at  the 
time  of  its  formation  contained  an  inactive  subject  part 
and  an  active  dominant  part :  in  each  of  them   „ 

.  Similarity 

the  inactive  subject  part  enjoyed  many  of  the   of  the 
material  appliances  and  had  many  of  the  habits   Aus*rasia" 

r  ~  J  empire  and 

of  mind  usually  found  in  civilised  societies,  but  the  Saxon 
the  dominant  part  was  nearly  barbarous  and  empire* 
very  loosely  organised.  The  truth  of  these  propositions  will 
be  seen  if  we  remember  that  in  the  Austrasian  empire  the 
inactive  subject  part  consisted  of  the  Romanised  inhabitants 
of  Gaul  and  northern  and  central  Italy,  and  that  the  active 
dominant  part  was  formed  by  the  Austrasian  tribe  with 
other  German  tribes  dependent  on  it,  and  that  in  the  Saxon 
empire  the  inactive  part  was  the  Italians  from  the  Alps  to 
Rome  and  the  active  part  was  the  Saxons  and  other  German 
tribal  peoples.  And  further,  since  in  each  of  the  two 
empires  the  active  dominant  part  was  only  a  collection  of 
tribes  very  loosely  joined  together,  that  active  part  was 
incapable  of  providing  any  strong  organ  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  whole  empire :  in  fact  the  only  organs  for  the 
government  of  each  empire  were  a  single  man  and  an 
assembly  of  tribal  origin  consisting  of  local  governors  with 
or  without  their  attendant  warriors.  Hence  it  came  about 
that  in  each  of  the  two  empires  almost  every  generation  of 
men  was  more  disunited  than  the  one  before  it.  The 
empire  of  the  Austrasians  only  held  together  till  the  death 
of  Charlemagne :  the  empire  of  the  Saxons  just  contrived  to 
exist  for  three  centuries,  from  951  to  1250,  but  in  its  career 
there  was  an  interval  between  1056  and  1106  in  which  the 
frail  bonds  that  held  its  parts  together  were  broken,  and  the 
parts  acted  as  independent  and  hostile  communities. 

In  the  seventeenth  chapter  I  described  the  empire  of  the 
Csesars  and  briefly  compared  with  it  the  empires  founded 
by  the  Russians  and  by  the  English  East  India  Company. 


328  TYPES  [chap.  xvm. 

Each  of  those  three  empires  was  founded  by  a  strongly 
organised  body  of  men  through  the  conquest  of  dis- 
Empiresof  organised  peoples.  If  the  word  empire  were 
the  Roman  correctly  used  to  denote  only  political  aggregates 
the  German  like  tne  empire  of  the  Csesars  to  which  it  was 
type.  originally  applied,  I  should  say  that  those  three 

are  the  only  empires  that  have  ever  existed :  as,  however,  the 
word  is  always  used  incorrectly  with  a  wider  signification,  I 
will  say  that  those  three  are  the  only  empires  of  the  Roman 
type.  In  the  present  chapter  I  have  described  the  so-called 
empires  of  the  Austrasians  and  of  the  Saxons,  and  have 
shown  that  each  of  them  was  founded  by  a  loosely  organised 
body  of  men  through  the  conquest  of  disorganised  peoples. 
These  two  empires  may  be  called  the  empires  of  the  German 
type. 

Although  the  empires  of  the  Roman  type  are  not  like 
those  of  the  German  type,  the  empires  of  the  two  types 
Empires  of  must  be  put  in  a  bundle  together,  because  all 
the  two  types  the  empires  of  both  types  have  the  common 
govern-  characteristic  of  being  derived  from  compulsory 

ments.  junctions  of  unlike  bodies  politic,  and  because 

this  characteristic  places  them  in  contrast  with  all  other 
bodies  politic.  The  characters  of  the  two  sorts  of  political 
aggregates  derived  from  compulsory  junctions  of  unlike 
bodies  politic  and  the  nature  of  their  governments  can  be 
compendiously  exhibited  in  a  tabular  form. 


CHAP.    XVIII.] 


OF  EMPIRES 


329 


POLITICAL  AGGREGATES  DERIVED  FROM  COM- 
PULSORY JUNCTIONS  OF  UNLIKE  BODIES 
POLITIC,  AND  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS. 


Kinds  of  Aggregates. 

1.  Empires  of  the  Roman  type 
founded  by  strongly  organised 
bodies  of  men,  namely — 

The  empire  of  the  Csesars,  325- 
395. 

The  Russian  Empire,  1800-1900. 

The  Indian  Empire,  1800-1900. 


Governments. 

A  single  man,  bureaucratic  civil 
service,  standing  army. 


2.  Empires  of  the  German  type 
founded  by  loosely  organised 
bodies  of  men,  namely — 

The  Austrasian  Empire. 

The  Saxon  Empire. 


A    single    man,    and    a    tribal 
assembly  of  local  chieftains. 


Note  on  the  Words  'Feodum,'  'Fief.' 

The  words  feodum,  feudum,  fief,  all  derived  from  some  Teutonic 
or  Scandinavian  word  that  meant  property,  were  not  perhaps  used 
to  denote  principalities  in  France  before  the  thirteenth  century. 
No  certain  instance  of  the  use  of  any  of  the  words  in  any  country 
before  the  twelfth  century  is  known  to  me :  for  though  feudum 
occurs  in  what  professes  to  be  a  quotation  of  a  capitulary  of 
Conrad  the  Salic  made  in  1027  (Mon.  Germ.  H.  Legg.  ad  annum) 
we  do  not  know  that  the  quotation  is  verbally  accurate  :  the  man 
who  made  it  may  have  found  beneficium  in  the  original  and  put 
feudum  in  its  stead,  as  more  intelligible  to  his  contemporaries.  In 
1166  feodum  militis,  feofatus,  feofamentum  occur  profusely  in  the 
cartels  delivered  to  Henry  the  Second  of  England  by  his  nobles 


330  FIEFS  [chap,  xviii. 

and  prelates :  the  cartels  are  printed  in  Hearne's  edition  of  the 
Liber  Niger  Scaccarii. 

When  the  words  feodum,  fief  were  established  in  common  use, 
they  meant  a  piece  of  land  divided  off  from  an  estate  or  from  a 
political  territory  and  placed  under  a  separate  tenant  or  ruler. 
They  are  therefore  perfectly  suitable  names  for  denoting  those 
estates  in  land  or  local  governments  which  the  Austrasian  kings 
gave  to  their  nobles,  and  I  have  not  feared  to  use  them  accord- 
ingly, though  I  believe  that  when  the  estates  and  local  govern- 
ments were  first  given  they  were  called  beneficia  and  the  word 
feoda  was  not  in  use,  and  that  after  they  became  independent  one 
was  called  dominium  (lordship),  another  comitatus,  and  another 
ducatus,  and  there  was  no  word  but  beneficia  that  could  be  employed 
to  denote  each  and  all  of  them. 

The  principalities  that  arose  in  France  in  the  tenth  century  got 
their  name  of  fiefs  because  they  were  portions  cut  off  from  the 
dominions  of  the  Austrasian  sovereigns :  but  they  gained  their 
most  distinctive  characteristics  from  the  fact  that  their  inhabitants 
were  descended  from  ancestors  who  had  been  thoroughly  crushed 
under  the  rigid  administrative  system  of  the  Caesars,  and  it  is 
more  important  to  remember  that  they  had  been  portions  of 
the  Roman  Empire  than  that  they  had  been  included  in  the 
Austrasian  territories.  In  Germany  no  less  than  in  France  there 
were  in  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century  independent 
principalities  that  had  been  under  the  Austrasian  Kaisers ;  but 
the  German  principalities  got  their  characteristics  because  their 
inhabitants  were  descended  from  tribesmen.  In  order  to  get  a 
right  notion  of  the  German  principalities  it  is  necessary  to  lay 
stress  on  their  tribal  origin,  and  I  shall  accordingly  speak  of  them 
as  communities  derived  from  junctions  of  tribes.  For  the  princip- 
alities in  France  we  must  have  some  other  name,  and  I  have 
called  them  fiefs,  though  I  should  have  preferred  some  name  that 
would  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  they  stood  on  portions  of 
the  empire  of  the  Caesars.  The  principalities  in  Italy  may  bear 
the  same  name  as  those  in  France :  but  they  were  so  shortlived 
that  it  does  not  matter  greatly  what  we  call  them.  The  estates 
of  nobles  in  England  and  elsewhere,  which  were  called  fiefs  but 
never  became  independent,  will  not  attract  our  attention  because 
they  did  not  form  bodies  politic. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

JUNCTIONS   OF  TRIBES,   EFFECTED   BY   COMPULSION 

In  the  present  chapter  we  have  to  glance  at  those  tribes 
in  Europe  which  did  not  mingle  with  descendants  of  the 
subjects  of  the  Caesars,  and  at  their  posterity  till  the  fifteenth 
century:  but  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  do  more  than 
glance  at  them,  because  they  did  not  succeed  in  forming 
well  defined  political  bodies  except  here  and  there  for  one 
or  two  or  three  generations  at  a  time.  The  physical 
geography  of  their  habitat  will  not  detain  us.  I  am  con- 
tent to  say  of  it  briefly  that  nowhere  except  in  the  small 
region  now  called  Switzerland,  which  will  be  noticed  in 
a  future  chapter,  could  there  be  found  any  natural 
barriers  such  as  would  avail  to  prevent  a  strong  tribe 
from  conquering  a  weak  neighbour.  It  will  be  best  to 
look  first  at  the  German  tribes  in  Britain,  because  we 
possess  information  about  them  which  indicates  what  they 
were  like  only  two  or  three  centuries  after  their  original 
establishment. 

The  Germans  on  their  landing  in  Britain  were  not  tribes 
but  companies  of  private  adventurers  seeking  their  fortunes 
in  a  new  land.     Before  they  started  from  Ger-   _ 

J  German 

many  they  had  put  themselves  under  the  com-  tribes  in 
mand  of  men  who  were  to  be  their  leaders  in     n  m' 
war:  after  they  were  settled  on  the  land  in  Britain   they 
needed  some  methods  of  deterring  individual  settlers  from 
robbing  or  injuring  their  neighbours.    They  gathered  them- 

331 


332  GEEMAN  TEIBES  [chap.  xix. 

selves  in  very  small  groups  which  either  then  or  afterwards 
were  called  hundreds  or  lathes  or  rapes  or  wapentakes,  and 
the  men  in  each  little  group  met  together  frequently  for 
the  purpose  of  compelling  wrongdoers  to  give  compensation 
to  those  whom  they  had  injured.  Groups  of  hundreds 
were  tribes :  and  each  tribe  took  as  its  king  or  ealdorman 
the  man  who  had  been  its  military  leader  before  it  conquered 
the  land  for  its  settlement.  The  earliest  document  that 
tells  us  about  a  tribe  is  a  collection  of  the  Dooms  of 
iEthelberht  who  was  king  of  Kent  in  596  when  Augustine 
landed  in  Britain.1  The  document  sets  down  those  dooms 
or  sentences  which  had  been  pronounced  in  the  assemblies 
of  the  hundreds  or  lathes  and  were  to  serve  as  precedents 
for  the  future :  and  from  it  we  may  infer  that  the  local 
assemblies  had  much  work  to  do,  and  the  king  very  little 
unless  the  tribe  chanced  to  be  involved  in  a  war.  The 
tribes  showed  clearly  how  little  they  cared  whether  they 
were  under  their  own  king  or  under  the  king  of  another 
tribe  by  the  ease  with  which  they  allowed  themselves  to  be 
conquered.  Penda,  who  was  king  from  626  to  655  of  the 
tribe  of  the  Mercians  on  the  Welsh  marches,  conquered  all 
the  many  tribes  between  the  mouths  of  the  Dee,  the 
Humber,  the  Nene,  and  the  Bristol  Avon.  The  only 
associations  that  the  tribesmen  cared  about  were  their 
local  groupings  in  hundreds  or  wapentakes. 

The  West  Saxon  tribe  was  very  much  larger  than  any 
other  tribe  that  was  made  purely  by  expansion  of  a  single 
The  West  tribe  into  territory  conquered  from  the  Britons, 
Saxons.  an(j  not  by  junctions  of  many  German  tribes. 

Accordingly  the  West  Saxons  under  their  king  Ine,  who 
reigned  from  688  to  728,  were  gathered  not  only  in  hundreds 
but  also  in  much  larger  groups  called  shires.  Each  shire 
had  a  scirman  or  sheriff  as  judge,  and  an  ealdorman  whom 

1  Thorpe,  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes,  pages  1-10. 


chap,  xix.]  IN  BRITAIN  333 

the  king  and  his  council  of  Wise  Men  appointed  to  lead  its 
armed  forces.  The  establishment  of  the  shires  made 
subsequent  kings  of  Wessex  still  weaker  than  kings  who 
reigned  only  over  groups  of  hundreds,  and  in  755  Sigebryht 
king  of  the  West  Saxons  was  f  for  his  unright  deeds  de- 
prived by  Cynewulf  and  the  West  Saxon  Wise  Men  of  all 
his  kingdom  except  Hamtunscir.' * 

Between  716  and  1066  conquests  of  tribes  by  tribes  were 
made  again  and  again,  and  when  the  conquests  were  made  it 
was  said  the  conquered  tribes  were  under  the  king 
who   had  conquered   them :   but  in  truth  local  trjbes  never 

groups,  small  at  first  but  eventually  as  large  as   a11  united 
f    ,/  _  *  5    .         before  iooo. 

half  a  dozen  or  even  more  of  our  modern  counties, 
were  the  largest  associations  that  the  people  thought  im- 
portant and  cared  to  maintain.2  Throughout  the  tribal 
period  of  English  history  local  groups  alone  had  any 
vitality,  and  the  central  authority  was  weak.  Even  Cnut, 
the  strongest  of  all  tribal  rulers  in  England,  could  not  keep 
his  whole  insular  dominions  under  a  single  government, 
but  entrusted  provinces  to  four  great  earls  I  in  the  time  of 
Edward  the  Confessor  the  earls  were  strong  and  the  king 
was  weak. 

In  Norway  and  in  Denmark  were  tribes  much  like  what 
the  English  tribes  became  when  they  had  been  established 
for  a  few  centuries.  In  Norway  south  of  Scandinavian 
Trondhjem  there  were  to  begin  with  twenty  or  tnbes- 
thirty  fylker  or  folks,  which  had  kings  of  their  own : 
Snorre  Sturleson  the  Icelander,  who  between  1221  and  1241 
paid  many  visits  to  Norway  and  gathered  traditions  and 
records  of  events  in  the  country,  mentions  both  the  folks 
and  their  kings  so  clearly  that  the  homes  of  nearly  all  the 

1  Dooms  of  Ine  39  and  8  in  Thorpe,  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  :  Anglo- 
Saxon  Chron.  a.d.  837,  845,  851.     A.  S.  Chron.  a.d.  755. 

2  J.  R.  Green,  Conquest  of  England,  the  later  chapters. 


334  TRIBES  IN  [chap.  xix. 

folks  can  be  identified.1  After  about  the  year  920  Norway 
was  more  often  than  not  nominally  under  a  single  king: 
but  the  folks  were  so  separate  that  each  had  a  thing  or 
assembly  of  very  independent  small  landowners  who  lived 
on  the  produce  of  their  freehold  estates,  and  they  were 
also  so  free  to  combine  as  they  chose  that  they  arranged 
themselves  in  groups  of  folks,  and  in  each  group  established 
a  diet  composed  of  deputies  from  the  things : 2  the  diets 
and  the  things  were  so  influential  that  the  kings  could  not 
perform  any  important  action  in  any  locality  till  they  had 
received  the  permission  of  a  thing  or  of  a  diet.  Denmark 
did  not  long  remain  divided  into  separate  tribes,  but  fourteen 
districts  called  syssaels  had  local  governments  of  much 
importance,  and  the  kings  were  powerless  if  the  syssaels 
disapproved  their  proceedings.3  Of  Sweden  in  the  Dark 
Ages  we  know  almost  nothing :  but  in  1296  a.d.  the  Swedes 
had  a  number  of  provincial  diets  which  took  their  several 
parts  in  the  election  of  a  king  to  rule  over  all  the  provinces.4 
The  existence  of  these  diets  indicates  clearly  that  what  were 
then  provinces  had  in  earlier  ages  been  independent  tribes. 
When  the  tribes  were  joined  by  conquest,  each  tribe  became 
a  province,  and  what  had  been  its  folkmoot  descended  to  be 
a  provincial  diet. 

In  Spain  the  little  bands  of  Christians  who  fled  from  the 
Moors  in  713  into  the  mountains  of  Asturias  and  Cantabria 
Tribes  in  were  compelled  through  fear  of  their  Moham- 
Spam.  medan   enemies   to  abandon   life  in   towns,  to 

subsist  in  the  open  country  on  the  produce  of  the  earth  or 
on  plunder,  and  to  adopt  for  a  time  a  tribal  manner  of  living. 

1  Laing,  Sea  Kings  of  Norway,  a  translation  of  Snorre  :  maps  in  Spruner- 
Menke  and  in  Baedeker,  Norway  and  Sweden. 

2  Snorre,  Saga  4.  11  :  and  Baedeker,  Norway  and  Sweden,  Introduction, 
p.  xlviii. 

*  Dahlmann,  Geschichte  von  Ddnemarck,  vol.  1. 

4  Geijer,  History  of  Sweden.     Translation  by  J.  H.  Turner,  p.  81. 


chap,  xix.]  CONTINENTAL  EUROPE  335 

Between  800  and  1033  they  made  large  conquests  from  the 
Moors:  they  occupied  the  lands  and  the  towns  that  they 
had  gained,  and  on  taking  to  life  in  towns  escaped  from  their 
tribal  humiliation.  The  nobles  among  them  who  had 
found  contingents  for  making  the  conquests  acquired  great 
estates  of  land  in  which  they  kept  bands  of  armed  followers, 
and  the  towns,  possessing  for  defence  against  the  Moors 
strong  walls  and  citizens  trained  to  fight,  were  almost  in- 
dependent. The  Christians  who  came  from  Asturias  had 
a  king,  and  those  who  came  from  Cantabria  had  only  a 
count :  but  both  the  king  and  the  count  were  often  power- 
less to  control  the  nobles  and  the  towns.1  In  Spain,  as  in 
England  and  in  Norway  and  Denmark,  the  local  govern- 
ments were  comparatively  strong,  and  the  central 
governments  were  weak. 

In  1066  England  was  invaded  by  William  Duke  of 
Normandy,  who  claimed  to  be  rightful  king  of  the  English 
people,  and  by  a  number  of  adventurers  who  came 
from  Normandy  and  France  as  his  allies,' hoping  to  Normans 
win  separate  principalities  in  the  island.  William  m  ng 
got  the  kingdom  but  he  gave  his  allies  only  scattered  estates, 
knowing  that  they  were  likely  to  become  his  enemies.  Even 
so  the  adventurers  were  strong  enough  to  oppress  the  English- 
men and  the  Danes  on  their  lands,  and  in  consequence  the 
whole  English  and  Danish  population  formed  itself  into  one 
community.  William  sought  and  gained  the  friendship  of 
this  community,  the  largest  then  existing  in  the  world,  and 
hence  in  his  time  and  in  the  reigns  of  his  two  sons  the 
central  government  was  stronger  than  the  local  forces  of 
the  adventurers,  now  known  as  barons.  After  the  death 
of  Henry  the  First  his  inheritance  was  claimed  both  by 
Stephen  and  by  Maud:  while  the  claimants  were  contend- 
ing, the  barons  consolidated  their  territories  and  formed 

1  Lembke,  Geschichte  von  Spanien,  vol.  1. 


336  MEDLEVAL  [chap,  xix 

them  into  separate  and  independent  principalities,  which 
were  decidedly  not  tribal  because  they  contained  always 
one  or  more  strong  castles  and  in  many  cases  also  a  fortified 
town. 

Henry  the  Second  re-established  a  central  government, 
and  compelled  both  the  Norman  barons  and  the  English  to 
increased  act  together  in  obedience  to  him.  The  increased 
coherence  of  coherence  of  the  English  people  was  displayed 
people  lifter  m  tne  days  °f  Henry  the  Third.  In  1258  the 
"74-  barons  aided  by  the  people  reduced   the  silly 

king  to  impotence,  but  instead  of  cutting  up  the  country 
into  separate  principalities  they  formed  themselves  into 
committees  and  tried  by  that  means  to  set  up  a  central 
government.  The  committees  of  barons  governed  selfishly 
in  the  sole  interest  of  their  own  order ;  in  little  more  than 
a  year  one  of  their  number,  Simon  de  Montfort,  saw  that  their 
selfish  policy  was  suicidal,  and  on  becoming  leader  both  of 
the  barons  and  of  the  people  he  himself  undertook  the 
direction  of  the  central  government.  As  he  governed  in 
the  interest  of  all  classes,  some  of  the  most  powerful  men 
among  the  barons  turned  against  him,  and  helped  Edward 
the  king's  son  to  defeat  him  at  the  battle  of  Evesham. 
Simon  was  killed,  but  Edward  took  his  place  as  leader  of 
the  people,  and  with  the  aid  of  the  people  overpowered 
those  barons  who  cared  only  for  the  interests  of  their  own 
order,  and  when  he  became  king  as  Edward  the  First  was 
stronger  than  any  of  his  predecessors. 

Ever  since  the  Norman  Conquest  all  those  kings  who 
were  strong  enough  to  prevent  the  barons  from  rebelling 
had  found  it  necessary  to  conduct  their  govern- 
ment in  concert  with  a  council  of  barons  and 
important  prelates:  for  unless  they  obtained  the  consent 
of  the  barons  and  prelates  to  taxation  and  to  military 
enterprises   they  could   not  get   money   for   their  current 


chap,  xix.]  ENGLAND  33? 

expenses  nor  men  to  serve  in  their  foreign  wars.  During 
the  reign  of  Henry  the  Third,  while  the  king  was  absent 
in  Gascony,  his  queen,  acting  as  regent  in  his  stead,  found 
it  advisable  to  invite  deputies  from  the  shires  to  join  in 
council  with  the  barons  and  the  prelates,  because  more 
money  might  be  got  from  the  shires  if  their  deputies 
sanctioned  its  collection.  Edward  the  First  extended  the 
same  policy  by  inviting  deputies  also  from  the  cities  and 
boroughs,  and  thus  founding  a  Parliament  in  which  all  local 
groups  of  men  had  leaders  or  deputies  to  act  as  their 
spokesmen.  Only  two  years  later  the  Parliament  became 
so  strong  that  it  could  compel  Edward  to  promise  that 
henceforth  he  would  not  resort  to  any  of  the  more  productive 
methods  of  taxation  without  its  consent. 

Edward   the  Second  was  incapable  of  any  kingly  deed. 
Edward  the  Third   undertook   an  imprudent  war  for   the 
conquest  of  France,  and  found  that  he  could  not 
obtain  the  men  and   money  that   the  war  de-   kingly 
manded    without    conceding    large    privileges  authority> 
to   the  Parliament:   at  his  death  in   1377  the 
Parliament  was  equal  or  superior  to  the  king  in   power. 
Edward  left  behind  him  a  grandson  eleven  years  old  who 
succeeded  as  Richard  the  Second  and  three  sons  whom  he 
had  put  in  possession  of  great  appanages  by  marrying  them 
to   heiresses:  one  appanage  contained  five  important  earl- 
doms, the  others   one  or  two   each.     The  sons  with  their 
appanages  obtained  great  influence  over  Parliament:  and 
Richard  the  Second  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  reign  in 
tutelage  nominally  to  Parliament  but  in   truth   to  princes 
of  the  blood  royal.    One  of  these  princes,  Henry  Earl  of 
Derby,  grandson  of  Edward  the  Third,  destroyed  such  princes 
as  stood  in  his  way  by  perfidy,  and  then  with  the  aid  of 
a   Parliament    supplanted    Richard.      As  one   meeting  of 
Parliament  had  been   employed   by   Henry  to  elect  him 


338  CONTINENTAL  PEOPLES  [chap.  xix. 

as  king,  another  in  1406  regarded  him  as  its  creature,  and 
either  for  that  reason  or  because  it  reflected  on  the 
atrocious  acts  of  treachery  which  had  enabled  him  to 
gain  the  Crown,  considered,  though  it  did  not  accept,  a 
proposal  that  the  king  who  was  in  bad  health  should 
'  betake  himself  to  some  convenient  place,  where  by  the 
help  of  his  council  and  officers  might  be  ordained  a 
moderate  governance  of  his  household.1 '  Henry  the  Fifth 
was  enabled  by  the  respect  that  men  felt  for  his  resolute 
character  and  by  his  brilliant  victories  in  France  to  induce 
Parliament  to  treat  him  with  deference  during  his  short 
reign.  But  his  son  Henry  the  Sixth  was  feeble  in  body  and 
mind,  and  from  1455  till  1461  England  was  made  miserable 
by  wars  undertaken  by  ambitious  nobles  for  the  purpose  of 
deposing  Henry  and  setting  one  of  his  kinsmen  in  his  place. 
The  countries  in  continental  Europe  that  were  inhabited 
by  peoples  descended  from  junctions  of  tribes  never  suffered 
.  any  occupation  by  foreign  adventurers  such  as 

peoples  de-      befell  England,  and  none  of  them  was  troubled 
scended  from      -fa  such  fierce  contests  between   the  central 

junctions  of 

tribes,  government  and  local  landowners  as  the  English 

people  experienced  in  the  twelfth  century. 
But  in  all  of  them  the  man  who  claimed  to  be  hereditary 
ruler,  whether  he  was  called  king,  or  duke,  or  count,  or 
markgraf,  or  count  palatine,  found  it  impossible  to  get 
money  without  the  assent  of  an  assembly  or  assemblies 
in  which  persons  of  local  influence  took  part.  The  contin- 
ental countries  in  which  the  inhabitants  were  descended 
from  junctions  of  tribes,  and  the  government  was  conducted 
by  a  single  person  under  the  control  of  an  assembly  or 
assemblies  were  Norway,  Denmark,  Sweden,  all  the  larger 
principalities  in  Germany,  and  Castile.  The  largest  of  these 
countries  were  Norway,  Sweden,  and   Castile.     In  each   of 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  §  636. 


chap,  xix.]  OF  TRIBAL  ORIGIN  339 

them  government  conducted  under  control  of  assemblies 
led  at  some  time  in  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  century 
either  to  internal  strife  or  to  humiliation  by  foreign  foes, 
since  each  country  was  inhabited  not  by  one  people  but  by 
more  than  one,  and  since  travel  over  long  distances  was 
slow  and  therefore  the  machinery  of  government  was  in- 
effective. Norway  and  Sweden  lost  their  independence  and 
were  compelled  in  1397  to  accept  Margaret  Queen  of 
Denmark  as  their  sovereign  :  Castile  under  Henry  the  Fourth 
was  troubled  from  1469  till  1474  first  by  a  civil  war  between 
the  king  and  his  younger  brother  and  then  by  another  war 
to  settle  who  was  to  be  the  king's  successor.  In  the  German 
principalities,  whose  area  was  comparatively  small,  govern- 
ments of  princes  controlled  by  assemblies  succeeded  better, 
and  the  assemblies  or  landtage  lived  in  tolerable  harmony 
with  the  princes  who  sued  to  them  for  grants  of  money.1 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  all  the  most  important  junctions 
of  tribes   were   made   before   the  twelfth   century.     These 
junctions  made  in   the  Dark   Ages  constituted   The  tribes 
the  kingdoms   of  England,  Denmark,  Norway,  joined  to- 

c*cth.er  were 

Sweden,  and  Spain,  and  the  many  principalities   for  the  most 
in  Germany.    In  every  junction  of  tribes  made   partake- 
before  the  twelfth  century  the  tribes  joined  together  were 
of  the  same  kindred  and  of  like  character.     Thus  in  England 
Teutonic  Saxons  were  joined  with  Teutonic  Angles  and  Jutes 
but  not  with  Celtic  Britons  or  Welsh :  in  Spain  the  Teutonic 

1  Ersch  und  Gruber  Lexicon,  article  headed  Landstdnde,  Landtage. 
There  may  probably  exist  many  collections  of  documents  relating  to  the 
Landtage  of  individual  principalities.  The  only  collection  known  to  me 
relates  to  the  Landtag  of  Styria.  The  author  is  Dr.  Krones  :  the  collection 
was  published  in  1865-1869  at  Gratz  in  Styria :  it  consists  of  four  bundles 
of  documents  of  which  the  first  is  entitled  Zur  Quellenkunde  und  Oesch.  des 
mittelalt.  Landtagswesen  der  Steiermark,  the  third  Quellenmassige  Vorar- 
beiten  zur  Gesch.  d.  Landtag swesen  der  Steiermark,  n.  1522-1564  :  the  second 
and  fourth  consist  of  Nachtrage  und  Erganzungen.  The  entries  for  the  years 
1522-1527  show  the  action  taken  in  Styria  to  oppose  that  advance  of  the  Turks, 
which  led  in  1526  to  the  battle  of  Mohacs.     These  entries  are  illuminative. 


340  SUMMAEY  [chap.  xix. 

Goths  of  Asturias  were  joined  with  the  Teutonic  Suevi  of 
Galicia  but  not  with  Moors.  It  cannot  indeed  be  said  that 
the  bodies  politic  formed  before  the  twelfth  century  by 
junctions  of  tribes  were  homogeneous,  since  a  homogeneous 
body  politic  is  like  any  one  of  the  lesser  urban  communities 
of  Greece  and  is  all  one  piece,  and  has  all  its  atoms  similar : 
but,  if  I  may  coin  a  word,  they  were  homoiogeneous,  made 
of  pieces  of  like  stuff.  And  this  is  an  important  fact  because 
a  homoiogeneous  body  politic  can  in  process  of  time  breed  a 
progeny  of  homogeneous  bodies  politic.  I  believe  that  the 
little  bodies  politic  in  Germany  formed  by  junctions  of  few 
tribes  did  by  about  the  year  1400  breed  homogeneous  bodies 
politic :  but  in  the  larger  countries  as  England,  Norway,  Spain, 
whose  bodies  politic  were  formed  by  junctions  of  many  tribes 
the  process  of  generating  homogeneous  bodies  politic  was 
slower,  and  in  those  countries  all  the  bodies  politic  down  to 
the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  about  the  year  1500  were  only 
homoiogeneous.  After  the  twelfth  century  a  few  small 
joinings  of  peoples  with  unlike  tribes  took  place : — when  the 
mark  of  Brandenburg  was  made,  its  population  was  partly 
German  partly  Slavic,  and  from  1284  the  Welsh  were  subject 
to  the  English  king,and  in  1322  and  1326  theysent  representa- 
tives to  English  Parliaments.1  Thus  bodies  politic  derived 
from  junctions  made  after  the  twelfth  century  might  be  in 
a  minute  degree  heterogeneous,  made  of  unlike  materials : 
but  all  other  bodies  politic  derived  from  compulsory  join- 
ings of  tribes  were  either  homoiogeneous  or  homogeneous. 

The  succession  of  bodies  politics  descended  from  com- 
pulsory junctions   of   like   tribes  are    divided    into   those 
descended  from  junctions  of  few  tribes  and  those 
descended  from  junctions  of  many  tribes.     Their 
characters  and  governments  are  here  stated  in  a  tabular  form. 

1  Lingard,  Hist.  Engl.,  edition  of  1844  in  thirteen  small  volumes,  vol.  3, 
328  note,  from  New  Rymer,  2.  484,  649. 


CHAP.    XIX.] 


SUMMAEY 


341 


SUCCESSIONS  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  DESCENDED  FROM 
COMPULSORY  JUNCTIONS  OF  LIKE  TRIBES 


Kinds  of  Successions. 

1.  Descended  from  junctions  of 
few  tribes,  and  existing  in 
German  principalities.  After 
1400  A.D.  successions  of 
homogeneous  bodies  politic. 

2.  Descended  from  junctions  of 
many  tribes,  and  existing  in 
England  and  other  large 
countries.  Throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  successions  of 
bodies  politic  only  homoio- 
geneous,  never  homogeneous. 


Governments. 

A  single  man,  with  a  Landtag 
which  granted  taxes. 


Ordinarily,  a  king  and  a  rudely 
made  parliament ;  but  oc- 
casionally, in  times  of  civil 
war,  no  effective  government. 


CHAPTER   XX 

JUNCTIONS  OF   FIEFS,   EFFECTED   BY   COMPULSION 

The  territory  assigned  to  the  Austrasian  king  Karl  the  Bald 
at  the  treaty  of  Verdun  in  843  lay  entirely  to  the  west  of 
the  rivers  Scheldt,  Maas,  Saone  and  Rhone,  and  comprised 
about  two  thirds  of  the  country  known  to  the  Romans  as 
Gaul.  The  part  of  it  to  the  north  of  the  Loire  had  been 
occupied  by  Salian  Franks  and  was  called  Francia:  the 
country  around  Dijon  had  formed  a  small  part  of  the  large 
district  of  the  Burgundians  and  was  called  Burgundia:  the 
region  south  of  the  Loire  had  been  occupied  once  by 
Visigoths,  but  bore  the  name  of  Aquitania,  by  which  part  of 
it  had  been  known  to  Julius  Caesar.  Throughout  Francia  and 
Burgundia  and  Aquitania  counts  and  landlords  succeeded 
before  the  year  900,  as  I  have  already  mentioned,1  in 
establishing  themselves  as  rulers  of  small  independent 
fiefs  or  principalities.  Soon  after  900  the  strongest  fief- 
holders  in  the  northern  part  of  the  country  were  the  Count 
of  Paris  and  the  Duke  of  Burgundy :  to  them  was  added  in 
912  another  prince  equally  strong,  when  Hrolf,  son  of 
Rognvald  earl  of  More  in  Norway,  a  leader  of  Scandinavian 
adventurers,2  planted  the  best  of  his  chieftains  as  counts  or 
viscounts  or  lords  in  the  country  about  Rouen  and  Caen  and 
Bayeux,  and  himself  undertook  the  task  of  ruling  them  with 
the  title  of  Duke  of  Normandy. 

1  See  p.  325. 

2  Snorre  Sturleson,  Laing's  translation,  Saga  3,  ch.  24. 
342 


chap,  xx.]  COUNTY  OF  PARIS  34  3 

From  the  year  888  the  fief  holders  in  Francia  and 
Burgundy  found  it  convenient  to  have  some  one  to  appear 
as  their  leader  or  figurehead  in  case  they  needed  Dux  and 
to  wage  a  war  that  was  not  entirely  a  matter  of  Rex- 
disagreement  among  themselves.  From  888  to  898  and 
from  922  to  936  and  again  from  987  onwards  the  man  that 
they  set  up  was  called  king :  between  900  and  922  and  again 
from  936  to  987  he  bore  the  title  of  dux  Francorum,  which 
means,  as  I  believe,  military  commander  of  the  men  of 
Francia  and  nothing  more.  Whatever  title  he  bore  the 
man  nominally  elevated  above  his  fellows  had  no  authority 
outside  his  own  fief,  unless  he  chanced  to  be  entrusted  by 
several  fiefholders  with  the  command  of  their  contingents 
in  a  war  which  they  waged  in  common :  but  the  county  of 
Paris  had  such  a  recognised  precedence  among  the  fiefs  that 
no  fiefholder  other  than  a  count  of  Paris  was  elected  to  be 
king  or  dux,  except  in  the  years  from  923  to  936,  when  a 
count  of  Paris  passed  on  the  title  of  king  to  a  duke  of 
Burgundy  who  had  married  his  sister,  because  he  understood 
that  his  own  power  would  be  the  greater  if  he  kept  the 
military  command  as  dux  and  were  not  burdened  with  the 
name  of  king  which  roused  the  jealousy  of  the  fiefholders. 

From  987  to  1098  the  counts  of  Paris  who  were  called 
kings  were  decidedly  less  influential  than  their  ancestors  who 
had  been  only  duces.     Philip  the  First,  count  of 
Paris  and  king  from  1060  to  1108,  incurred  the   Sixth,  uo8- 
contempt  of  the  Parisians  and  of  every  one  else :    "37" 
by  1098  the  lords  of  Montmorenci,  Luzarches,  Beaumont, 
Montl'heri  and  Le  Puiset,  all  within  twenty  miles  of  Paris 
had  made  themselves  independent  in  their  strong  castles- 
The    presence    of    their  castles  so   near  to    the   city  was 
intolerable  to  the  Parisians  because  the  lords  of  the  castles 
robbed  merchants  bringing  goods  to  Paris  or  carrying  goods 
away.     As  soon  then  as  Louis  Le  Gros,  the  king's  son,  who 


344  FEENCH  KING'S  [chap.  xx. 

was  from  1103  joint  king  with  his  father,  showed  the 
citizens  how  to  attack  the  castles,  they  were  enthusiastic  in 
furnishing  him  with  soldiers:  priests  sometimes  acted 
valiantly  in  his  little  armies  as  captains  of  their  par- 
ishioners.1 Louis  became  sole  king  in  1108  as  Louis  the 
Sixth,  and  before  his  death  in  1137  he  had  acquired  a 
district  a  hundred  and  sixty  miles  long  from  a  little  south 
of  Amiens  to  a  little  south  of  Orleans,  and  fully  forty  miles 
broad,  together  with  outlying  pieces  at  Laon,  Reims,  and 
Bourges.2  Within  this  district,  which  was  known  as  the 
king's  demesne,  the  immediate  successors  of  Louis  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  rebellious  vassals,  because  Louis 
established  in  it  an  orderly  government,  and  the  inhabitants 
were  resolved  not  to  tolerate  unruly  lords  of  castles.  Outside 
the  demesne  Louis  the  Sixth  and  his  next  successor  had  no 
authority  unless  they  sought  it  and  got  it  at  the  head  of 
an  army  as  any  fiefholder  might  do :  dukes  of  Normandy, 
counts  of  Anjou,  counts  of  Flanders  were  independent 
within  the  groups  of  counties  of  which  they  were  the 
heads. 

The  Parisians  and  the  country  folk  around  Paris,  when 
they  fought  bravely  under  Louis  the  Sixth,  showed  them- 
^  , .    ,       selves  better  men   than  any  Frenchmen  before 

The  king  s  J 

demesne,  them :  but  they  and  the  other  inhabitants  of 
II37'  the   king's    demesne  were    quite    incapable    of 

doing  anything  except  in  obedience  to  orders,  and  were 
easily  governed.  Louis  appointed  officers  called  prevdts 
over  local  districts  to  collect  the  king's  dues  and  taxes 
and  to  act  as  judges  in  cases  of  small  importance:  before 
his  death  seventeen  towns  were  centres  of  prevotes?    When 


1  Suger,  Vita  Ludov.  Orossi,  ch.  18,  p.  65  in  the  edition  by  Molinier. 

2  For  the  limits  of   the  demesne   see   Droysen,   Handatlas,   p.  57,  and 
Erlauternden  Text  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

3  Luchaire,  Institutions  Monarchiques,  vol.  2,  pp.  295-298. 


chap,  xx.]  DEMESNE  345 

he  had  to  decide  a  dispute  about  lands  between  vassals  on 

the  demesne,  he  took  care  to  be  supported  by  some  vassals 

summoned  for  the  occasion  to  express  their  opinions  and  by 

any  other  men  of  important  station  who  might  chance  to 

be  at  hand :    a  group  of  vassals  and  friends  of  the  king 

brought  together  for  such  business  or  for  any  other  purpose 

was  called  a  Curia  Regis  or  court  of  the  king.     The  practice 

of  summoning  vassals  and  friends  to  advise  about  titles  of 

lands  was  not  invented  by  Louis:   a  copy  of  a  judgment 

pronounced  in  a  Curia  Regis  so  far  back  as  1016  is  still  in 

existence.1 

From  the  time  of  Louis  the  Sixth  the  king's  demesne  had 

a  far  more   orderly  government  than  any  fief:    and  the 

inhabitants    of    any  fief  that   happened   to  be 

without  a  ruler,  or  had  a  bad  ruler,  were  glad  to   0f  the  king's 

be   annexed   by  a   king   and   brought  into   the   demesne» 
.  .  ,  1200-1300. 

demesne.     Philip  the  Second  between  1201  and 

1204  made  the  demesne  fully  four  times  as  large  as  it  had 

been    by  conquering   Normandy,   Anjou,   Touraine    and  a 

small   part   of  Poitou   from   John   of   England.      In    1209 

the  region  between  Toulouse  and  the  mouth  of  the  Rhone 

was  attacked  by  adventurers  from  Francia  on  the  pretext 

that  its  inhabitants  were  heretics :  Louis  the  Eighth  went  to 

the  aid  of  the  adventurers  when  they  were  in  distress,  and 

in  1229  the  greater  part  of  the  land  from  which  the  heretics 

and  their  rulers  had  been  extirpated  was  adjudged  by  a 

Pope  to  King  Louis  the  Ninth,  and  added  to  his  demesne. 

Other  acquisitions  followed,  and  before  the  year  1300  the 

king's  demesne  included  about  half  of  the  territory  that  had 

been  awarded  to  Karl  the  Bald  at  Verdun.     The  inhabitants 

of  the  conquered  principalities  were  willing  to  be  subjects 

of  the  kings,  because  the   kings  gave  them  more  orderly 

government  than  they  had  known  under  their  former  rulers. 

1  Langlois,  Textes  rel.  partem.,  pp.  1-11. 


346  DEMESNE  AND  FIEFS  [chap.  xx. 

Local  government  on  the  demesne  of  Louis  the  Ninth  was 

an  enlarged  version  of  the  government  set  up  by  Louis  the 

Sixth  on  his  small  demesne.    Prevots  were  greatly 

of  the  king's    multiplied,  and  higher  officers  called  baillis  and 

demesne,  seneschaux  were  appointed  with  some  control 
1229-1300.  rr 

over    several   prevotes.      The   work   of    central 

judicature,  which  had  been  done  under  Louis  the  Sixth  by 

the   king  with   the   aid   of  vassals   and    friends   gathered 

together  only  now  and  again,  had  grown   so   that  it  was 

enough  to  employ  a  court  of  justice  sitting  from  day  to 

day  through  at  least  half  the  year.     Louis  the  Ninth  found 

it  necessary  to  employ  permanent  judges  as  a  nucleus  of  a 

court.     A  great   school   of  trained  lawyers  had  arisen  in 

Paris,  and  some  of  these  were  paid  by  the  king  to  be  present 

constantly  for  judicial  work.     Varying  groups  of  vassals  sat 

with  the  paid  judges,  but  the  paid  judges  did  all  the  most 

important  work.     The  name  Curia  Regis  gradually  dropped 

out    of   use,   and    the    court   was   generally  known    as   le 

Parlement  de  Paris.1     The  sole  organs  in  the  government 

of    the    demesne    were    the    king   and    le    Parlement    de 

Paris. 

Between  1200  and  1300  the  kings  of  France  became  able 

to  put  a  check  on  the  princes  outside  the  demesne  in  case 

Relations        they  grossly  misgoverned  or  made  war  without 

between         justification  on  any  of  their  own  vassals.     Even 

the  demesne      .  . 

and  the  fiefs,  in  the  eleventh  century  the  princes  in  Francia 
1200-1300.  kacj  done  homage  to  the  counts  of  Paris  who 
held  the  title  of  king,  and  in  their  homages  had  made  them 
some  promises.  The  homages  and  the  promises  had  then 
been  without  effect  because  they  could  be  broken  with 
impunity :  in  the  thirteenth  century  they  entailed  obligations 
which  could  not  be  evaded,  because  the  kings  were  able  to 
insist  that  they  should  be  interpreted  in  le  Parlement  de 

1  Luchaire,  Inst.  Francises,  §§  305,  306. 


chap,  xx.]  BONIFACE  VIII.  347 

Paris.  The  skill  of  the  lawyers  in  le  Parlement  extended 
their  power  beyond  the  mere  interpretation  of  homages : 
they  usurped  a  power  of  hearing  appeals  from  all  law  courts 
established  by  the  fiefholders  in  their  fiefs,  and  their 
usurpation  was  not  disputed  because  they  administered 
better  justice  in  most  cases  than  any  court  outside  the 
demesne.  The  fiefholders  still  managed  the  government 
of  their  fiefs  from  day  to  day,  but  they  were  subject  to 
intermittent  control  from  le  Parlement  de  Paris.  On  the 
demesne  the  king  was  sovereign :  over  the  fiefs  he  was  only 
suzerain :  the  fiefholders  were  not  his  subjects  but  were 
bound  to  him  in  alliances  which  they  dared  not  break ;  the 
soil  of  France  still  belonged  not  to  one  people  but  to  many 
peoples. 

Between   1295    and   1302   the  authority   of    Philip   the 
Fourth  to  rule  his  subjects  in  the  demesne  as  sovereign  and 
to  control  the  fiefholders  as  suzerain  was  dis-   Quarrei  of 
puted   by  a   foreign  power.    From  1075  for  a   phillPthe 

r  *  ■       r  ,  Fourth  with 

century  and  three  quarters  the  Popes  had  striven  Boniface  the 
incessantly  to  prove  that  they  inherited  more  of  El£hth- 
the  majesty  of  the  Caesars  than  the  German  Kaisers:  and 
Innocent  the  Fourth  in  1250  had  secured  the  destruction 
of  the  empire  which  Charlemagne  had  begun.  In  1294 
Benedetto  Gaetani,  who  seems  from  his  subsequent  actions 
to  have  been  half  crazy,  became  Pope  as  Boniface  the 
Eighth.  He  soon  began  to  tell  the  kings  of  France  and  of 
England  what  they  might  do  and  what  they  might  not  do 
in  such  terms  as  a  Roman  Caesar  would  be  likely  to  use  in 
writing  to  a  tetrarch  of  Galilee  or  a  king  of  Commagene  or 
of  the  Cottian  Alps.  Edward  the  First  of  England  in 
1301  laid  the  behaviour  of  Boniface  before  his  barons  in 
Parliament,  and  they  sent  the  Pope  a  letter  which  con- 
vinced him  that  it  would  be  imprudent  to  meddle  further 
with   a  king  whose  subjects  supported    him   with   whole 


348  INCAPACITY  OF  THE  [chap.  xx. 

hearts.1  In  the  year  1301  Philip  of  France  thought  that 
he  also  could  face  the  Pope  better  if  he  had  a  Parliament.  If 
he  had  summoned  his  assembly,  which  as  early  as  1357  was 
known  as  the  States  General,2  from  the  demesne  only,  it 
might  have  become  something  like  the  English  Parliament : 
as  he  gathered  it  not  only  from  the  demesne  but  also  from 
all  the  fiefs  it  was  no  better  at  best  than  a  congress  from  a 
number  of  communities  in  alliance  whose  interests  chanced 
to  concur  in  the  quarrel  with  Boniface,  but  on  other 
occasions  were  likely  to  be  at  variance. 

The  states  general  comprised  nobles,  clergy  and  towns- 
men.    Among  the  nobles  in  1302  those  who  signed  a  letter 
to  the  Pope  included  two  princes  of  the  blood 

States  . 

general  first  royal,  about  eighteen  holders  of  fiefs  outside  the 
summoned      demesne,  and  some  vassals  who  held  land  on  the 

in  1302. 

demesne:3  the  clergy  and  the  townsmen  came 
equally  from  the  fiefs  and  from  the  demesne:  in  1308  the 
towns  that  sent  deputies  to  the  assembly  numbered  two 
hundred  and  twenty  five.4  The  men  of  every  order  were 
drawn  from  many  separate  principalities,  and  even  within 
any  one  principality  no  two  orders  had  much  of  common 
interest  or  aims.  Both  Boniface  and  Philip  clearly  thought 
that  the  existence  of  a  states  general  was  no  proof  that  all 
Frenchmen  would  stand  by  their  king:  for  Boniface  dis- 
regarded the  letters  from  the  orders  in  the  assembly  and 
prepared  a  bull  of  deposition  against  Philip,  feeling  con- 
fident that  it  would  avail  to  turn  many  Frenchmen  against 
the  king,  and  the  king  or  his  minister  Guillaume  de  Nogaret 

1  For  books  that  give  the  text  of  the  letter  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist., 
§  181,  note.  I  have  read  it  in  Rishanger,  Rolls  Series,  pp.  208-210.  The 
letter  is  short,  firm,  and  dignified,  but  respectful. 

2  See  Ordonnancea  des  Hois  de  France  for  1357. 

3  Milman,  Lat.  Christ.,  5.  88  in  octavo  edition  =  Book  xi.  ch.  ix.  gives  the 
names. 

4  Boutaric,  Philippe  le  Bel,  pp.  439-448. 


chap,  xx.]         FRENCH  STATES  GENERAL  349 

thought  the  bull  so  formidable  that  de  Nogaret  stopped 
its  issue  by  inducing  some  armed  ruffians  and  a  mob 
to  offer  personal  violence  to  the  Pope:  Boniface  was  so 
mauled  in  the  tumult  that  he  died  only  a  month  later.  The 
quarrel  between  Philip  and  Boniface  ended  by  making  the 
Papacy  powerless  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half:  but  that 
result  was  achieved  by  the  brutal  violence  of  Philip  and  his 
minister,  and  not  by  the  states  general. 

All  meetings  of  the  states  general  held  in  the  fourteenth 
century  proved  themselves  incapable  of  useful  work.     In 
1355  when  France  was  invaded  on  two  sides  by 
the  English,  a  states  general  usurped  control  of  0f  the  states 
the   government:  but  by  1358  its  mismanage-   £eneralfor 

ii-ni  it     useful  work. 

ment  was  so  flagrant  that  the  French  were  glad 
to  be  rid  of  it.  Thenceforth  for  about  eighty  years  meetings 
of  states  general  were  rare  and  none  of  them  transacted  any 
important  business.  The  sole  effective  organs  for  the 
government  of  the  demesne  and  for  the  management  of 
the  unequal  alliance  between  the  king  and  the  fiefholders 
outside  the  demesne  were  the  king  and  le  Parlement  de 
Paris. 

The  wars  waged  by  Edward  the  Third  against  French 
kings  proved  that  the  English  who  acted  unitedly  in  the 
field  were   stronger  than  the  many  peoples  in    . 

°  .  ^     r      f  Anarchy  in 

France.  Both  the  English  and  the  French  France, 
suffered  from  the  wars,  but  the  French  far  more  I392I4I3- 
grievously:  the  English  lost  men  and  money,  but  France 
was  pillaged  from  end  to  end  by  combatants  on  both  sides. 
The  system  of  government  in  France  made  very  large 
demands  on  the  king.  In  the  demesne  local  government 
was  conducted  by  baillis  and  seneschaux  and  pr^vots :  but 
the  king  and  his  ministers  needed  to  supervise  all  these 
officers  without  any  aid  from  local  assemblies.  Outside  the 
demesne   the  suzerainty  of  the   king  over   the  fiefholders 


350  THE  NETHERLANDS  [chap.  xx. 

could  only  be  maintained  by  careful  management.  It 
chanced  that  for  a  whole  century  beginning  at  the  death  of 
Philip  the  Fourth  in  1314  all  the  French  kings  except 
Charles  the  Fifth  were  unfit  for  the  work  that  was  needed. 
From  1392,  when  Charles  the  Sixth  became  mad,  princes  of 
the  royal  family  contended  sometimes  by  murders  and  some- 
times by  craft  for  the  enj  oyment  of  the  king's  revenue :  by 
1413  government  had  ceased  to  exist,  and  both  the  demesne 
and  the  fiefs  lay  ready  to  be  conquered  by  Henry  of  England. 
The  only  unions  of  fiefs  at  all  like  those  that  made  the 
French  king's  demesne  were  those  that  made  the  southern 
.    Netherlands:  the  northern  part  of  the  Nether- 

J  unctions  of  m  *■ 

fiefs  in  the  lands  was  made  by  junctions  of  tribes.  Late 
Netherlands.    ^  fche  fajgfiHofa   century  a  French   Duke   of 

Burgundy  by  a  politic  marriage  acquired  Flanders  and 
other  adjoining  counties :  his  successors  mainly  by  prudent 
marriages,  carefully  exploited,  gained  many  more.  The 
dominions  of  the  dukes  in  the  Netherlands,  nearly  all 
acquired  by  them  not  later  than  1451,1  were  joined  together 
by  commercial  interests,  and  in  the  later  years  of  Philip  le 
Bon,  who  died  in  1467,  were  well  governed  under  a  council 
imitated  from  le  Parlement  de  Paris,  but  empowered  to 
advise  the  duke  and  not  only  to  adjudicate.  It  was  lucky 
for  the  Netherlanders  that  their  duke  Charles  the  Bold  lost 
his  hold  of  ducal  Burgundy,  which  could  not  be  entered 
from  their  territory  without  crossing  Lorraine :  after  Charles 
was  dead  the  central  government  in  the  Netherlands  was 
indeed  weak,  but  no  great  exertion  was  needed  for  the 
central  government  of  a  group  of  provinces  and  towns, 
whose  pursuits  were  commercial,  and  whose  interests  were 
in  the  main  identical.2 

1  After  1451  they  got  only  Gelderland. 

2  On  the  history  of  the  Netherlands  and  their  rulers  from  1363  to  1477, 
the  books  that  I  have  found  instructive  ..re  Chroniques  des  Rdigitux  den 
Dunes,  in  Collection  de  Chron.  Beiges  Inedits,  about  half  a  dozen  chronicles 


chap,  xx.]  SUMMARY  351 

The  results  of  my  examination  of  successions  of  bodies 
politic  descended  from  compulsory  junctions  of  fiefs  can 
be  very  briefly  stated. 


SUCCESSIONS  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  DESCENDED  FROM 
COMPULSORY  JUNCTIONS  OF  FIEFS 

Countries  and  Times  in  which  Governments, 
the  Bodies  Politic  lived. 

1.  French  king's  demesne,  1300-  King  or  sovereign  duke,  with  a 
1477.  law  court  or  judicial  council. 

2.  Netherlands  from  about  1451.  [In  France  from  1302   also   a 

states  general :    but  it  Avas 
thoroughly  ineffective.] 

If  we  desire  to  give  a  common  name  to  the  groups  of  men 
descended  from  compulsory  unions  of  tribes  or  of  fiefs  and 
living  each  under  a  separate  government  in  the   ~ 

o  r  e  Composite 

fifteenth  century,  we  may  best  say  that  they  bodies 
belong  to  the  very  large  class  of  composite  bodies  po  1 1C' 
politic,  or  bodies  whose  parts  are  separable  and  may  be 
desirous  or  willing  to  become  independent  bodies  politic. 
Every  union  of  communities,  whether  it  is  effected  by 
compulsion  or  by  agreement,  whether  the  communities 
joined  together  are  like  or  unlike,  equal  or  unequal,  is 
incapable  for  generations  of  producing  anything  other  than 
a  composite  body  politic.  It  is  true  that  the  component 
communities  do  not  breed  in  the  successive  generations 
communities  co-extensive  with  themselves :  those  descend- 
in  the  useful  collection  published  by  Ram,  Adrian  de  Veteri  Bosco  (Ouden- 
bosch)  in  Martene,  Le  Religieux  de  St.  Denys,  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois, 
Pierre  Fenin,  Olivier  de  la  Marche,  Chastellain,  Com  mines,  the  documents 
in  the  edition  of  Commines  by  Lenglet  Dufresnoy,  and  Pirenne,  Histoire 
de  Btlgique. 


352  COMPOSITE  [chap.  xx. 

ants  of  an  original  component  community  who  live  on  one 
border  of  their  habitat  mingle  with  neighbours  outside  that 
habitat  by  intermarriage,  by  commerce,  or  by  subjection 
to  a  common  local  government,  and  the  descendants  on 
another  border  intermingle  with  other  neighbours :  but  the 
result  of  such  intermingling  is  only  to  generate  new  local 
groups,  not  very  much  less  separable  from  the  whole 
composite  body  politic  than  the  original  component  com- 
munities had  been.  The  processes  of  intermingling  of 
communities  and  the  formation  of  new  local  groups  are  not 
recorded  by  historians,  but  their  results  can  be  seen,  for 
example,  in  the  history  of  England.  The  original  com- 
ponents of  the  English  were,  first,  tribal  communities  of 
Saxons,  Angles,  and  Jutes  (the  West  Saxons,  the  Mercians, 
and  the  rest),  constituting  by  far  the  largest  elements 
among  the  parents  of  the  English  race:  then  com- 
paratively small  communities  of  Danes  who  settled  as 
conquerors  over  the  Angles  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  island  : 
lastly  the  Norman  adventurers  who  were  not  a  community 
at  all,  but  settled  as  local  lords  wherever  their  leader 
William  gave  them  lands.  The  descendants  of  the  West 
Saxons,  the  Mercians,  the  Danes  did  not  hold  themselves 
aloof  as  distinct  local  communities:  their  fringes  inter- 
mingled, but  in  so  doing  only  founded  new  local  groups 
ready  to  be  consolidated  under  local  lords,  who  were  till 
the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  Norman  lords,  but 
afterwards  English  lords.  By  the  year  1455  there  was 
indeed  no  province  or  locality  in  England  whose  civilian 
inhabitants  desired  to  separate  themselves  from  the  rest  of 
the  English:  but  the  roving  soldiers  who  had  come  back 
from  France  had  gathered  themselves  into  private  armies 
under  earls  or  princes,  rendering  implicit  obedience  to  the 
nobles  under  whom  they  served  and  none  to  the  king :  the 
presence  of  these  private  armies  effectually  prevented  the 


chap,  xx.]  BODIES  POLITIC  353 

inhabitants  of  England  from  being  homogeneous  or  united. 
Something  like  what  happened  in  England  happened  also 
in  the  other  large  countries  that  had  been  brought  under 
one  government  through  unions  of  tribes  or  of  fiefs :  and 
thus  it  came  about  that  in  each  of  these  countries  the 
inhabitants  formed  in  the  fifteenth  century  nothing  more 
coherent  than  a  composite  body  politic. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

MEDIEVAL   CITIES:    (1)   INLAND   CITIES 

In  Italy  the  Ostrogoths,  the  Lombards,  and  the  Austrasian 
Franks,  coming  successively  as  conquerors,  failed  to  found 
any  large  community  co-extensive  with  their  conquests. 
Before  the  coming,  however,  of  the  Ostrogoths  the 
whole  country  and  especially  the  northern  part  of  it  was 
dotted  over  with  important  municipal  towns  founded  by 
the  Romans  or  the  Caesars.  In  the  time  of  Theodoric 
there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  towns  from  flourishing 
as  communities  subject  to  their  Gothic  ruler:  and  the 
existence  during  his  reign  of  officers  called  maritime 
tribunes  points  to  activity  shown  by  the  inhabitants  of  some 
part  of  the  Italian  coast.1  From  events  which  happened 
after  the  time  of  Theodoric  we  may  infer  that  activity  on 
the  sea  shore  and  on  the  sea  had  its  centre  in  the  lagoons 
a  little  to  the  north  of  the  mouths  of  the  Po  and  the  Adige : 
for  on  these  lagoons  during  the  two  centuries  of  the  Lombard 
domination  in  northern  Italy  twelve  little  communities  of 
fisher  folk,  belonging  to  a  people  that  had  for  ages  been 
called  Veneti,  made  themselves  into  the  most  active  seafaring 
folk  in  southern  Europe.  Their  advance  to  importance  is 
the  more  striking  because  during  the  troubled  times  of  the 
Lombards  the  inland  municipal  towns  of  northern  Italy 
make  little  show  in  history  and  must  be  supposed  to  have 
sunk  into  comparative  insignificance. 

1  Cassiodorus,   minister  of  Theodoric  and   afterwards  of  his  daughter, 
Amalasuentha,  addresses  an  epistle  ( Variarum,  12. 24)  to  the  Tribuni  Maritimi. 
364 


chap,  xxi.]  THE  VENETIANS  355 

In  the  present  chapter  it  is  my  intention  to  describe  only 
inland  towns :  but  as  the  fortunes  of  the  fishermen  on  the 
lagoons  affected  the  inland  towns  it  may  be  well 
to  point  out  at  once  why  the  lagoons  became   Venetians 
important.     They   were   inaccessible   from    the  to    4" 
land,  and  the  inhabitants  of  their  islands  of  mud   could 
practise    their    sea    craft    unmolested    by    the    Lombards. 
Owing  to  their  situation  at  the  end  of  the  long  and  narrow 
Adriatic  Sea  they  have  the  advantage,  most  unusual  in  the 
Mediterranean,  of  well  marked  tides,  and  their  tides  make 
them  a  very  much  better  natural  seaport   than  any  other 
in   their  neighbourhood.     Lastly,   they  lie   on   the   easiest 
route  between  central  Europe  and  the  eastern  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean   Sea.     The   main   ridge  of  the  Alps  which 
divides  Germany  from  Italy  is  not  anywhere  except  in  one 
point  much  lower  than  seven  thousand  feet  above  sea  level. 
The  one  point  is  the  Brenner  pass  which  leads  direct  from 
the  Venetian  lagoons  to  Germany.     When  the  Austrasian 
Franks  after  the  battle  of  Testry  in  687  were  undoubtedly 
the  strongest  people  in  Europe,  they  desired  wares  from  the 
east,   and   the   seamen   of   the   Venetian   islands,   not  yet 
collected  in   any   one  town,  were   their   carriers.     In  813 
when  envoys  were  sent  by  the  son  of  Harun  al  Raschid, 
reigning  as  Caliph  at  Bagdad,  on  a  mission  to  Sicily,  they 
made  their  voyage  in  a  Venetian  vessel : •  when  costly  wares 
from  the  east  were  offered  for  sale  at  Pavia  to  the  courtiers 
in    attendance    on   Charlemagne,   they   were   brought   by 
Venetian    merchants.2     And    this    last   incident   indicates 
how  the  activity  of  the  Venetians  affected  the  towns  in  the 
interior.     Commerce  in   Venetian   imports  arose  in  those 
towns,  and  enabled  their  inhabitants  to  make  accumulations 
of  wealth. 

1  Jaffe,  Monum.  Carol.,  p.  325  :  letter  of  Leo  in.  to  Charlemagne. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  694.     Monach.  Sangall.,  book  2.  ch.  18. 


356  NORTHERN  ITALY  [chap.  xxi. 

After  the  death  of  Charlemagne  in  814  the  power  of  the 
Kaisers  in  Italy  grew  less,  and  by  888  the  country  was 
„  ^  divided  into  fiefs.     But  from  900  to  930  northern 

Northern 

Italy,  Italy  was  cruelly  raided  by  savage  Hungarians, 

814107s.  an(j  tne  inhabitants  found  that  their  lives  and 
property  could  get  better  protection  from  town  walls  than 
from  fiefholders  and  their  small  bands  of  soldiers.  In  951, 
when  Otto  the  Great  made  his  first  entry  into  Italy,  the 
towns  were  strong  and  the  great  fiefs  were  weak.  Otto  put 
down  any  great  fiefholders  who  stood  in  his  way,  and  his 
successors  entrusted  the  government  to  officers  of  their  own 
bearing  the  titles  of  count  or  markgraf  (in  Latin  marchio), 
or  even  dux  or  ducissa :  but  at  the  same  time  bishops 
or  archbishops  occasionally  had  more  influence  over  the 
inhabitants  of  their  episcopal  towns  than  any  imperial 
officers.  A  count  usually  ruled  a  town  and  the  district 
around  it,  which  was  called  comitatus,  a  county :  a  marchio 
or  a  dux  had  a  larger  region  to  govern,  but  was  sometimes 
also  a  count  and  attended  to  the  humbler  work  of  ruling  a 
town  and  its  circumjacent  country : 1  a  bishop  or  an  arch- 
bishop could  lead  his  townsmen  into  a  war.  Between  1 008  and 
1046  wars  which  the  Lombard  cities  undertook  against  one 
another  gave  the  citizens  a  lesson  of  priceless  value  by  teach- 
ing them  to  estimate  military  training  at  its  proper  worth. 

In  1075  Pope  Gregory  the  Seventh  began  his  great  assault 

on  the  authority  of  the  Kaisers.     While  the  Kaiser  Henry 

the  Fourth  was  striving  to  save  himself  from 

Northern  °> 

Italy,  the  Popes  and  their  allies,  he  could  no  longer 

1075-1150.  g^ve  steady  support  to  his  counts  in  Italy :  from 
1100  or  soon  afterwards  counts  ceased  to  rule  in  the  towns, 
and  in  those  towns  of  which  we  have  records  their  place 
was  taken  by  magistrates  called  consuls  who  were  elected 

1  All  this  is  proved  by  the  documents  in  Muratori,  Antiquit.  Ilal., 
Dissert.  8  and  Dissert.  6. 


chap,  xxl]  PERIODS  357 

by  the  citizens  or  by  some  part  of  the  citizens.  The 
number  of  the  consuls  varied  greatly  from  town  to  town, 
and  probably  their  attributions  may  have  varied  also.  But 
everywhere  the  existence  of  the  consuls  proclaimed  the 
independence  of  the  towns:  everywhere  the  elected 
magistrates  were  judges  in  trials  and  suits  and  leaders  of 
the  townsmen  in  wars.  Between  1107  and  1127  quarrels 
between  groups  of  Lombard  cities  gave  their  inhabitants 
plenty  of  experience  in  the  arts  of  offence  and  defence,  and 
made  them  the  more  capable  of  maintaining  their  independ- 
ence in  case  of  need  against  any  Kaiser  who  might  desire  to 
meddle  with  them. 

By  the  year  1150  the  towns  of  Lombardy  had  gained 
practical  independence  but  had  not  yet  made 
their  independence  permanently  secure.     From   the  history 
this  time  forth  the  history  of  the  inland  towns   of  the  inland 

J  towns. 

in   Italy  falls  into   three    periods  which    may 
be  thus  distinguished : — 

Period  I.  1154-1268.  Wars  brought  into  Italy  by  Kaisers 

or  Popes. 
Period  II.  1268-1494.  Infrequency  of  wars  between  inland 

cities  waged  by  citizens. 
Period  III.  1494-1530.  Subjugation  of  the  inland  towns. 

Period  I.  1154-1268.    Wars  brought  into  italy  by 
kaisers  or  popes 

Ever  since  1075  wars  had  often  been  caused  by  rivalries 

between  Kaisers  and  Popes :  from  1154  the  cities  of  Italy 

took  an  active  part  in  them.     In  Germany  from 

1125  onward  the   two   most  powerful  princely   Frederic 

families  were  the  Swabian  house  of  Hohenstaufen   Barbarossa> 

1154-1183. 
(whose  castle  of  Waiblingen,  near  the  place  where 

Stuttgart  has  since  grown  up,  attained  accidental  notoriety), 

and  the  Bavarian  house  of  Welf  or  Guelf.     In  1152  Frederic 


358  KAISERS  AND  [chap.  xxi. 

Barbarossa,  head  of  the  Hohenstaufer,  was  elected  Kaiser, 
and  two  years  later  he  tried  to  be  master  of  the  cities  of 
Lombardy.  In  the  wars  that  ensued  and  lasted  till  1183 
Frederic  was  supported  by  the  greater  part  of  the  German 
princes  and  peoples :  he  was  opposed  in  arms  by  nearly  all 
the  Lombard  cities  under  the  patronage  of  several  successive 
Popes,  and  was  quietly  thwarted  by  Henry  the  Lion,  Duke 
of  Bavaria  and  Saxony,  and  head  of  the  house  of  Guelf.  In 
1176  Frederic  was  badly  defeated  at  Legnano,  and  in  1183 
in  a  treaty  made  at  Constance  he  recognised  the  independ- 
ence of  the  Lombard  cities. 

After  1183  Barbarossa  let  Italy  alone.     His  son  Henry 

the  Sixth  was  not  only  Kaiser  by  election  and  coronation 

but  was  also  husband  of  Constance  queen   by 

Comparative  #  ^  * 

quiescence,  birth  of  Naples  and  Sicily.  When  Henry  in 
1183-1237.  H89  tried  to  rule  his  wife's  dominions,  the 
Sicilians  took  as  their  king  Tancred,  who  though  not  born 
in  wedlock  was  son  of  one  of  their  princes  and  had  no  foreign 
blood  in  his  veins.  Hence  Henry  through  his  short  reign  of 
eight  years  was  employed  in  trying  to  gain  the  submission 
of  his  southern  subjects,  and  gave  no  trouble  to  any  of  the 
Italian  townsmen  except  the  Genoese,  whom  he  beguiled  in 
a  fraudulent  bargain.  From  Henry's  death  in  1197  there 
was  never  a  strong  Kaiser  in  Germany  till  1218,  and  the 
German  peoples  were  too  much  divided  at  home  to  meddle 
with  Italy.  But  in  1218  Frederic  the  Second,  grandson  of 
Barbarossa,  having  been  king  of  Naples  and  Sicily  since 
1197,  gained  undisputed  authority  in  Germany.  Till  1220 
German  affairs  detained  him  to  the  north  of  the  Alps  : 
but  then  he  began  to  reside  in  Italy,  and  employed  himself 
till  1236  in  giving  good  government  to  his  many  peoples 
in  Naples  and  Sicily,  except  during  eighteen  months 
in  1226  and  1227  when  he  went  on  a  crusade  to 
Palestine. 


chap,  xxi.]  POPES  359 

In  1237  Frederic,  being  strong  in  the  affection  felt  for  him 
by  his  Neapolitan  peoples  and  being  supported  by  most  of 
the  towns  and   nobles  of  north   eastern  Italy,   „r 

J      Wars  of  the 

made  the  grievous  error  of  trying   to  become   Popes 
master  of  the  Lombard  cities.     This  folly  gave   jKjKL  the 
Pope  Gregory  the  Ninth  a  grip  on  him  which   Second, 

123*7-12^0 

a  subsequent  Pope  Innocent  the  Fourth  made 
tighter.  In  the  great  war  which  ensued  from  1237  to  1250 
Frederic  drew  his  strength  from  Naples  and  Sicily,  from  the 
eastern  inland  towns  except  Bologna,  Parma,  and  Faenza, 
and  from  alliance  with  the  family  of  da  Romano,  which  till 
about  1226  had  owned  not  much  more  than  some  fiefs  of 
rural  land  near  Treviso  and  Vicenza,  but  had  since  then 
established  a  tyrannis  in  Treviso,  Vicenza,  and  Verona.  The 
Popes  were  upheld  by  the  cities  of  western  Italy  except 
Cremona  and  Pisa,  and  they  drew  large  revenues  by 
persuasion  from  Henry  the  Third  of  England  and  by 
extortion  from  the  English  clergy : x  Innocent  the  Fourth 
gained  the  countenance  of  a  council  of  prelates  at  Lyons 
in  1245  when  he  declared  that  Frederic  was  no  longer  to  be 
king  in  Germany,  or  Kaiser  in  Germany  and  Italy,  or  king 
of  Naples  and  Sicily.  Frederic  when  he  died  in  1250  had 
little  authority  except  in  southern  Italy,  and  four  years 
after  his  death  the  empire  founded  by  Charlemagne  came 
to  an  end.2 

During  the  wars  waged  in  Italy  from  1237  to  1250  the 
adherents  of  the  Hohenstaufer  called  themselves  Ghibelines 
by  corruption  of  the  name  Waiblingen,  and  the  supporters 
of  the  Popes  called  themselves  Guelfs.3    Frederic  was  followed 

1  See  especially  Matth.  Paris,  Chron.  Maj.,  ad  ami.  1245,  in  Rolls  Series, 
vol.  4,  416-422. 

2  Kington,  Frederic  the  Second,  cites  the  authorities  for  the  wars  of 
the  Popes  against  Frederic.  Salimbene,  printed  in  Docum.  Partneun  et 
Placentiam  tangentia,  should  be  read  first. 

s  See  p.  357. 


360  INLAND  CITIES  [chap.  xxi. 

in  his  titles  of  German  king  and  Kaiser,  and  king  of  Naples 
and  Sicily  by  his  son  Conrad,  who  only  survived  him  by 
,*  „   r.L        four  years:  soon  after  Conrad's  death  in  1254 

End  of  the  * 

Hohenstaufen  his  half  brother  Manfred,  son  of  Frederic  by 
^^ y*  a  Neapolitan  or  Sicilian  concubine  from  the 
family  of  the  di  Lancia,  proved  himself  a  most  capable 
leader  of  the  Ghibelines  of  the  south.  By  1256  he  was 
master  of  Naples  and  Sicily,  and  in  1260  he  helped  the 
Ghibeline  nobles  of  Tuscany  to  win  from  the  Guelfs  of 
Florence  the  battle  of  Montaperto,  a  little  north  of  Siena, 
which  as  Dante  says  fece  VArbia  colorata  in  rosso.1  In 
1263  Pope  Urban  the  Fourth,  a  Frenchman,  son  of  a  cobbler 
at  Troyes,  granted  the  kingdoms  of  Naples  and  Sicily  to 
Charles  d'Anjou,  brother  to  Louis  the  Ninth  of  France.2 
Charles  came,  defeated  and  slew  Manfred  at  the  battle  of 
Benevento,  got  possession  of  his  kingdoms,  ordered  in  1268 
the  execution  of  young  Conradin,  grandson  of  Frederic  the 
Second  and  the  last  of  the  Hohenstaufer,  and  soon  became 
the  strongest  sovereign  in  the  Italian  peninsula. 

During  the  wars  between  the  Popes  and  the  Kaisers  about 

twenty  five  inland  cities  of  some  importance  were  governed 

by  magistrates  of  their  own  choice.    These  cities, 

Governments  . 

of  inland  whenever  hostile  armies  came  near  them,  could 
cities  to  1267.   Qnjy  ^  defend^  by  the  combined  efforts  of  all 

their  citizens :  hence  in  times  of  danger  their  governments 
were  such  as  gave  satisfaction  to  all  orders  in  their  bodies 
politic.  Their  magistrates  chosen  by  many  electors  were 
usually  called  consuls  :  many  cities  had  also  a  podesta,  who 
was  never  a  native  of  the  city  in  which  he  bore  rule,  and 
was  usually  electus  ad  brevia,  or  chosen  by  a  commission  of 
three  citizens  or  not  many  more  to  whom  brevia  or  written 

1  Milman,  Lat.  Christ.,  Book  xi.  ch.  2;  Perrens,  Hist,   de  Florence,  1. 
495-505 ;  Dante,  Inferno,  10.  85. 

2  Muratori,  R.I.S.,  18.  274  D  ;  Milman,  Lat.  Christ.,  Book  xi.  ch.  3. 


chap,  xxl]  TO  1267  A.D.  361 

authorisations  had  been  sent:1  the  business  of  a  podesta 
commonly  consisted  in  supervising  foreign  relations,  in 
acting  as  supreme  judge,  and  sometimes  in  leading  the 
citizens  when  they  went  forth  to  fight.  But,  if  there  were 
no  foreign  foes  to  fear,  strife  often  broke  out  between  the 
nobles  and  the  humble  citizens.  Thus  during  the  com- 
paratively peaceful  period  from  1183  to  1237  small  civil  wars 
between  the  orders  broke  out  in  Faenza,  Brescia,  Milan, 
Piacenza,  Modena,  Cremona,  and  Bologna :  and  again  after 
1238  when  the  cities  in  Lombardy  were  freed  from  fear 
of  Frederic  and  of  Eccelin  da  Romano  civic  discord  was  so 
violent  in  Milan  that  the  citizens  in  several  successive  years 
chose  members  of  the  family  of  della  Torre  to  be  captains  of 
the  people,  and  to  enjoy  a  sovereignty  not  very  different 
from  that  which  tyranni  had  possessed  in  ancient  Greece.2 

Period  II.  1268-1494.    Infrequency  of  wars  between 

INLAND   CITIES   WAGED   BY   CITIZENS 

After  1268  the  citizens  of  inland  cities  generally  abstained 
from  fighting  outside  their  own  territories,  being  too  much 
occupied  in  commercial  pursuits  to  care  for  an 
increase  of  their  rural  lands.  Hence  they  had  cities  of  Italy, 
no  pressing  need  for  keeping  any  armed  forces.  I  ~1494" 
In  the  cities  of  the  valley  of  the  Po  and  around  it  we  do 
not  read  of  citizens  armed  and  enrolled  in  trained  bands : 
but  some  of  the  cities  of  central  Italy,  especially  Bologna  and 
Florence,  had  a  good  civic  militia.  Thus  it  came  about  in 
the  valley  of  the  Po  that  when  dissensions  arose  within  the 
cities  or  in  the  rural  districts  belonging  to  them,  the 
townsmen    properly  so   called   had    no  force   with   which 

1  Elections  to  the  office  of  podesta  for  Siena  about  1237-1243  are  described 
in  documents  printed  in  Archivio  Storico  Jtaliano  for  1866,  Part  2,  pages  8 
and  47-51. 

2  Hallam,  Mid.  Ages,  1.  399  and  411. 


362  CITIES  IN  NORTHERN  [chap.  xxi. 

to  oppose  any  hired  professional  soldiers  who  might  be 
brought  among  them  by  demagogues  or  other  ambitious 
citizens,  and  fell  about  the  year  1300  or  not  much  later 
under  the  rule  of  tyrannic  Bologna  and  Florence,  having 
good  companies  of  men  usually  employed  in  industrial 
work  but  ready  to  act  in  defence  of  their  liberties,  expelled 
or  kept  out  professional  soldiers  from  their  territories. 
Without  professional  soldiers  there  can  be  no  tyrannis : 
Bologna  and  Florence  lived  under  civilian  governments, 
and  the  lesser  cities  around  them,  Siena,  Pistoia,  Arezzo, 
Perugia,  were  able,  partly  through  the  influence  of  Bologna 
and  Florence,  and  partly  through  the  policy  of  the  Popes,  to 
follow  their  example  and  to  maintain  governments  of  a  like 
character. 

About  the  cities  of  northern  Italy  there  is  little  to  say. 

Each  city  had  its  tyrannus :   but  by  1350  only  five  tyranni 

,     „    reigning    in   Milan,    Ferrara,    Verona,    Padua, 

Cities  of  north-         5        &  '  '  ' 

em  Italy,  Mantua  were  independent :  most  of  the  lesser 
1  "I494-  tyranni  were  under  the  suzerainty  of  the  Visconti 
of  Milan,  but  some  few  were  under  the  della  Scala  of 
Verona. 

As  the  companies  of  militia  at  Bologna  and  Florence  gave 
a  distinctive  tone  to  the  governments  of  their  own  cities, 
and  helped  to  give  a  like  tone  to  the  govern- 
centrai  Italy,  ments  in  the  lesser  cities  around,  I  think  it 
1  I494'  well  to  explain  how  they  came  into  existence. 
Bologna  bore  the  brunt  of  the  wars  of  Frederic  the  Second 
from  1238  to  1250  against  the  Guelfs,  and  during  those  wars 
drew  its  strength  mainly  from  its  bands  of  civilians  trained 
to  fight  on  occasion.1  Between  1250  and  1268  the  Bolognese 
militia  compelled  the  city  of  Imola  to  become  dependent 
on  Bologna : 2   after  1268  the  citizens  of  Bologna  relied  on 

1  Gron.  di  Bologna  ad  ann.  1239  in  Muratori,  M.I.S.,  18.  260  1). 

2  7&td.,275Dand276  A. 


chap,  xxi.]  AND  CENTRAL  ITALY  363 

their  civic  militia  to  keep  their  rural  vassals  obedient  to 
their  urban  government.  Florence  took  so  little  part  in  the 
wars  against  Frederic  that  its  citizens  did  not  feel  any  need 
of  a  civic  militia  for  defence  against  the  Kaiser  :  but  during 
those  wars  many  of  the  Ghibelines  of  Tuscany  and  Florence 
devoted  themselves  to  military  service  on  behalf  of  Frederic, 
and  became  almost  as  much  professional  knights  and  men 
at  arms  as  the  petty  vassals  in  countries  north  of  the  Alps. 
In  1248  these  Ghibeline  warriors  got  possession  of  the  city 
of  Florence  by  force  of  arms:  in  1250  the  Guelfs,  being  far 
more  numerous  than  their  adversaries,  regained  the  govern- 
ment and  immediately  established  a  civic  militia,  which 
thenceforward  was  ready  to  contend  against  the  Ghibelines 
and  which  finally  vanquished  them  in  1289  at  Campaldino.1 
Among  the  governments  of  the  cities  of  central  Italy  the 
various  kinds  of  governments  that  prevailed  in  Florence 
have    alone    attracted   the   attention   of  many 

_        .  .  .  .      Florence  and 

competent    critics,  and    about   them    alone    it   Bologna  the 
is  easy  for  any  ordinary  reader  to  form  a  judg-   best  known 

J  J  J  .  .         inland  cities. 

ment.      Hence     it     is     that     only    Florentine 
governments   will    be    described    in   some   detail:    a    few 
words  may   also  be  added   on  the  nature  of  the  govern- 
ments of  Bologna. 

Before  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  Florence  was 
already  an  industrial  city  with  trade  guilds:  for  in  a 
document  of  1193  we  read  of  septem  rectores  qui  Florence  to 
sunt  super  capitibus  artium*  By  the  same  I25°- 
time  its  citizens  had  made  an  imperfect  conquest  of  the 
castles  belonging  to  noblemen  within  a  radius  of  about 
fifteen  miles  from  its  walls :  some  they  had  demolished,  but 
others  remained  to  annoy  them.  After  1200  they  were 
largely  employed  in  holding  the  ground  they  had  got  and 

1  Perrens,  Hint,  de  Florence,  1.  310-357. 

2  Quoted  by  Perrens,  Hist,  de  Florence,  1.  204  n. 


364  GHIBELINES  [chap.  xxi. 

in  trying  to  get  more,  and  their  body  politic  in  its  widest 
sense  was  partly  urban  and  partly  rural.  They  were  by  no 
means  free  from  wars  with  neighbouring  cities,  especially 
Siena,  and  their  methods  of  government  were  such  as 
became  a  city  whose  citizens  were  compelled  to  be  patriots. 
Their  magistrates  who  managed  the  routine  of  government 
were  called  consoli  till  1232  and  afterwards  anziani : x  above 
these  was  a  podesta  chosen  from  outside  of  Florence  to  be 
judge  in  suits  or  trials  of  great  consequence  and  to  command 
the  armies  of  the  commonwealth. 

After  the  death  of  Frederic  the  Second  the  Ghibelines 
had  no  longer  a  strong  Kaiser  as  their  leader,  and  the 
Feuds  of  Guelfs  had  no  longer  a  strong  Kaiser  to  contend 
Ghibelines       against.     Since  the  two  parties  were  no  longer 

and  Guelfs  -  .  .  .        '    .   , 

in  Tuscany,  engaged  in  a  contest  about  an  imperial  question 
1260- 1267.  0f  worid  wide  interest,  they  began  to  degenerate 
into  local  factions.  It  is  hard  to  be  certain  how  the  two 
factions  were  composed  in  Tuscany:  but  it  seems  likely 
that  those  Florentines  who  had  estates  outside  the  city  and 
wished  to  be  local  rural  lords  were  Ghibelines,  and  those 
who  cared  more  for  their  interests  within  the  walls  and  for 
the  productiveness  of  industry  were  Guelfs.  The  two 
factions  contended  with  extraordinary  bitterness.  In  1260 
the  Ghibelines  after  winning  the  battle  of  Montaperto  with 
Manfred's  aid  thought  of  levelling  the  walls  of  Florence 
with  the  ground,  but  at  the  desire  of  Farinata  degli  Uberti, 
who  was  of  their  number,  contented  themselves  with  driving 
the  leaders  of  the  Guelfs  into  exile.  In  1267  the  Guelfs 
being  restored  by  Charles  d'Anjou  banished  the  Ghibelines 
and  confiscated  their  property.  One  third  of  the  confiscations 
they  gave  to  the  government  of  Florence,  one  third  to 
persons  whom  the  Ghibelines  had  injured,  and  the  remain- 
ing third  they  took  as  a  permanent  endowment  for  the 

1  Perrena,  Hist.  Flor.,  1.  282. 


chap,  xxi.]  AND  GUELFS  365 

Guelf  party  to  which  they  belonged.  In  consequence  of 
this  last  measure  the  Parte  Guelfa  became  a  state  within 
the  state  no  less  than  the  Plebs  had  been  in  ancient 
Rome. 

The  victors  in  1267  were  the  townsmen  who  cared  about 
their  industries :  the  vanquished  were  mainly  rich  men  who 
lived  indeed  within  the  city,  but  took  interest  in 
their  estates  of  land  in  the  contado,1  or  rural  oftheGueifs 
districts,  and  preferred  fighting  to  weaving  or  »n  Florence 
pounding  drugs.  The  Ghibelines,  as  soon  as 
they  were  driven  into  exile  in  1267  by  Charles  d'Anjou, 
scattered  themselves  in  many  Italian  cities  and  became  a 
formidable  band  of  external  foes  to  the  Guelfs.  Hence  for 
some  years  the  Guelfs  at  home  kept  their  old  form  of 
government  under  anziani  and  a  podesta,  which  conduced 
in  some  degree  to  military  efficiency:  in  1280  they  were 
induced  by  the  persuasion  of  Pope  Nicholas  the  Third  and 
his  nephew  Cardinal  Latino  to  let  some  of  the  Ghibelines 
return,  and  gave  them  six  places  on  the  board  of  fourteen 
anziani.  But  the  two  factions  could  not  act  together,  and 
from  1282  there  were  no  Ghibelines  in  Florence  or  its 
territory.  Seven  years  later  the  exiles  on  making  one  last 
attempt  to  gain  their  restoration  by  force  of  arms  were 
severely  defeated  at  Campaldino,  and  thus  in  1289  Florence 
was  a  purely  Guelfic  city. 

After  the  expulsion  of  the  Ghibelines  in  1267  the  contado 
lost  all  its  importance  and  Florence  was  nearly  as  much  a 
simple  city  state  as  Athens  had  been  after  the  u. 

1  *     ,  Classes  at 

death  of  Perikles.    But  the  classes  at  Florence  Florence, 
were  not  so  few  as  they  had  been  at  Athens.    In  13&7' 
Athens  there  were  only  the  poor  citizens,  and  the  rich 
citizens,  and  the  slaves.     In  Florence  there  were  no  slaves 

1  Contado  =  comitatus.  The  word  proves  that  in  the  days  before  1100 
Florence  had  had  a  count  as  ruler. 


366  FLORENCE  [chap.  xxi. 

and  the  workers  were  poor  citizens.  Hence  it  came  about 
that  the  Florentine  community  was  divided  into  many 
classes  defined  by  their  employments.  There  was  to  begin 
with  a  small  class  of  nobili,  and  many  other  classes  all 
embraced  under  the  one  collective  name  popolini  or 
commoners.  The  word  nobile  is  not  explained  so  far  as 
I  know  in  any  document  of  the  thirteenth  century:  in 
the  fourteenth  any  Guelf  was  nobile  if  the  heads  of  his 
family  in  two  or  three  generations  had  attained  the  honour 
of  knighthood.  Probably  the  definition  of  a  nobile  was 
much  the  same  in  the  thirteenth  century  as  in  the  next : 
for  the  nobili  before  1300  gave  much  trouble  by  disorderly 
violence.  The  popolani  were  commercial  or  industrial  or 
professional.  Those  popolani  who  had  enough  capital  to 
manage  a  business  were  divided  into  twenty  one  l  arts  or 
trade  guilds:  and  the  rich  men  who  rose  to  eminence  in 
their  guilds  were  popolani  grassi.  Of  the  poor  those  who 
had  no  capital  worked  for  wages.  It  seems  clear  that  they 
worked  in  their  own  homes,  and  were  therefore  paid  by  the 
piece :  if  they  had  worked  in  great  factories,  their  gatherings 
in  their  workshops  must  have  been  mentioned  in  some  of 
the  many  narratives  that  have  been  preserved  of  faction 
fights  in  the  streets  and  squares :  the  bottiche  (in  French 
boutiques)  to  which  reference  is  so  frequently  made  were  I 
believe  only  warehouses  in  which  raw  material  was  kept  and 
from  which  it  was  distributed  among  the  craftsmen,  who 
worked  on  it  at  their  homes  and  carried  the  finished  job 
back  to  the  bottica  from  which  the  raw  material  had  been 
issued.  Those  poor  citizens  who  had  some  savings  occupied 
a  humble  position  as  master  workmen  in  a  guild. 

In  1282  the  Florentines  abolished  the  board  of  anziani 
and  entrusted  their  government  to  six  men  called  Priori, 

1  The  arte  are  enumerated  in  a  document  of  1292  printed  in  Arch.  Stor. 
Ital.  for  1855,  vol.  1,  p.  38. 


chap,  xxi.]  THE  GREATER  ARTS  367 

who   had   risen   to  the  top  of  the  six   greater  arts.1     The 

greatest  of  these   arts  was  the  Calimala,  which  imported 

coarse  woollen  cloth  from  Flanders  and  remade 

it  into  a  glossy  fabric :  the  next  five  were  the   0f  the  seven 

silk  workers,  the  furriers,  the  money  changers,    greater  arts, 
,  i         •  ii  Ti  ••        1282-1292. 

the  apothecaries,  and  the  arte  d%  Lana,  consisting 

of  those  wool  workers  who  were  not  in  the  Calimala.     The 

lawyers  had  a  guild  as  powerful  as  any  of  the  six,  but  they 

got  no  place  in  the  government,  because  they  had  so  much 

influence  in  advising  the  Priori.     Each  board  of  Priori  sat 

for  two  months  only,  and  no  man  could  be  re-elected  as  a 

Priore  till  after  an  interval  of  two  years.      The  outgoing 

Priori,  together  with  a  few  friends  whom  they  invited  to 

advise  them,  appointed  their  successors. 

Beside  the  Priori   there   were  for  police  and  justice  a 

podesta  and  a  captain  of  the  people:    for  approving  new 

laws  or  resolutions  there  were  five  councils,  and 

no  new  law  took  effect  till  it  had  been  sanctioned  parts  0f  the 

by  all  the  five  councils.     But  the  largest  of  the   government, 

J  °  1282- 1292. 

councils  had  only  a  hundred  members :  and  there 

is  nothing  to  prove  that  any  man  was  forbidden  to  be  a 

member  of  all  five  councils  at  once.     On  very  rare  occasions 

the  Priori,  after  a  new  law  had  been  approved  by  all  the  five 

councils,  laid  it  before  a  general  assembly  of  the  citizens 

gathered  in  a  Parlamento :  but  when  a  Parlamento  met  it 

was  a  general  rule  that  no  proposal  could  be  made  except 

by   the  governing   body   of   an  art,   and   it  was   only  by 

special  indulgence    that    the   president    of  a    Parlamento 

in    1285    declared    that    any    citizen    might    speak    his 

1  From  1282  to  1348  my  chief  authority  for  Florentine  history  is 
Giovanni  Villani,  one  of  the  best,  if  not  the  very  best,  of  all  mediaeval 
historians.  The  text  of  Villani  in  Muratori,  R.I.S.,  strikes  me  as  being 
often  very  corrupt :  I  have  used  the  version  given  in  Biblioteca  classica 
Italiana,  because  it  is  always  intelligible  :  but  I  do  not  knew  what  critical 
process  was  used  in  making  it. 


368  THE  GREATER  [chap.  xxi. 

opinion.1  The  whole  powers  of  government  belonged  to 
two  or  three  hundred  successful  tradesmen ;  the  rest  of  the 
citizens  took  no  part  in  the  choice  of  their  rulers,  and  were 
habitually  without  any  assembly.  What  happened  within 
each  art  is  not  definitely  stated,  but  a  passage  in  Giovanni 
Villani  seems  to  imply  that  the  governors  of  an  art  called 
consoli  were  appointed  by  their  predecessors.2  Whatever 
was  the  method  of  choosing  the  consoli  of  an  art,  it  is 
certain  that  they  were  chosen  for  their  experience  in 
commercial  business  and  not  for  any  other  qualification. 

Thus  in  1282  all  power  was  lodged  nominally  in  the  hands 
of  the  six  greatest  arts  but  really  of  seven,  since  the  lawyers 
Government  were  as  powerful  as  if  they  had  had  a  Priore.  For 
of  the  greater  some  years  after  1282  the  Priori  tolerated  the 
arts,  1292-  presence  in  the  city  of  the  nobili,  because  they 
1342.  had  some  dread  of  the  Ghibelines  in  exile,  and 

thought  that  the  military  prowess  of  the  nobili  Guelfi  might 
be  useful:  but  when  the  Ghibelines  had  been  decisively 
defeated  in  1289  at  Campaldino,  and  the  nobili  in  their 
fortified  houses  became  dangerous  to  the  tradesmen,  they 
resolved  to  deal  hardly  with  those  nobili  who  were  insub- 
ordinate. For  this  purpose  they  needed  allies,  and  they 
found  them  in  the  five  arts  next  below  the  seven  which 
directed  the  government.  With  the  help  of  the  five  middle 
arts  they  passed  and  enforced  the  famous  Ordinamenti  di 
Giusticia,  and  thereby  reduced  the  nobili  to  impotence  or 
to  exile.  The  five  middle  arts  were  admitted  to  places  on 
the  board  of  Priori :  but  still  the  outgoing  Priori  and  their 


1  Minutes  of  a  Parlamento,  Perrens,  vol.  2,  p.  474. 

2  Villani  (10.  111.)  tells  us  that  in  1328,  when  the  Florentines  took  to 
electing  the  Priori  of  the  Republic  by  anticipation,  the  arts  adopted  the 
same  method  of  choosing  their  consoli.  If  the  method  of  electing  consoli 
had  previously  been  different  from  the  process  of  choosing  Priori,  he  could 
hardly  have  omitted  to  notice  the  difference.  On  anticipated  elections 
see  next  page. 


chap,  xxi.]  AND  MIDDLE  ARTS  $69 

friends  selected  new  Priori,  and  the  government  was  still  in 
the  hands  of  a  small  number  of  wealthy  tradesmen,  and 
there  was  no  assembly  or  large  council  of  the  citizens. 
Twenty  new  officers  called  gonfaloniers  were  appointed  to 
command  the  militia  of  the  city,  and  nineteen  of  them  were 
permitted  to  hold  office  for  the  long  period  of  six  months : 
but  they  were  elected  like  the  Priori  by  the  outgoing  Priori 
with  the  aid  of  a  few  chosen  friends.  All  magistrates  and 
officers  except  nineteen  gonfaloniers  were  changed  on  the 
middle  day  of  every  alternate  month,  and  the  precautions 
taken  against  giving  any  one  experience  in  public  business 
made  government  discontinuous  and  despicable.  Dante, 
writing  about  1308,  saw  this  clearly  enough  when  after 
admiring  Virgil  and  Sordello  for  embracing  one  another 
because  they  were  both  Mantuans  he  pitied  t&e  Florentines 
for  their  wretched  feuds,  and  at  last  exclaimed  that  Florence 
spent  more  trouble  in  ruling  its  life  than  Athens  or  Lace- 
daemon,  but  spun  its  clauses  providing  always  so  thin  that, 
before  mid  November  brought  new  Priori  into  office, 
October's  gossamer  no  longer  held.1 

About  1316  a  suspicion  arose  that  the  secret  elections  of 
magistrates  were  being  manipulated  by  one  oount  Battifolle 
so  as  to  exclude  men  whom  he  disliked  from  the  Anticipated 
share  that  they  expected  in  the  prizes  of  office,  elections. 
In  order  that  all  commercial  magnates  at  the  top  of  the 
twelve  privileged  arts  might  get  their  due  share  of  meddling 
in  the  government,  the  Florentines  resolved  in  and  after 
1324  that  all  the  office  bearers  for  two  years  or  more  should 
be  elected  at  once,  and  all  the  men  chosen  should  come  into 
office  in  an  order  to  be  determined  subsequently  by  drawing 
lots.  From  1328,  when  the  new  system  was  in  full  working 
order,  an  election  was  held  in  January  in  every  alternate 
year :  a  board  of  216  men  drawn  from  the  twelve  privileged 

1  Pwgatorio,  canto  6,  especially  the  last  twelve  lines. 
2  A 


370  DECLINE  OF  [chap.  xxi. 

arts  selected  from  those  same  arts  442  prospective  office 
bearers.  Every  two  months  thirty  six  men  taken  by  lot 
from  the  442  became  rulers  of  the  commonwealth. 

Between  1300  and  1325  the  companies  of  civic  militia  in 

Florence  and  in  most  other  cities  of  central  Italy  became 

less  and  less  capable  of  going  through  a  campaign 

Decline  of         .       .  T     _,.  ,   . 

citizen  in  the  open  country.     In  r  lorence,  and  m  most 

armies,  other   cities  where   the   civilians  governed,  the 

1300- 1325. 

tradesmen  and  artisans  could  keep  within  their 

gates  and  shoot  missiles  from  their  walls,  but  there  were  no 
professional  soldiers  fit  for  service  in  the  field.  In  the  cities 
of  Lombardy  the  tyranni  kept  some  body  guards  merely  to 
protect  them  from  their  own  subjects,  and  these  body  guards 
were  trained  soldiers,  but  they  were  not  drawn  from  the 
subjects  whom  they  were  intended  to  control,  and  their 
numbers  were  small. 

In  a  rich  country  whose  inhabitants  are  too  effeminate  to 
defend  themselves  it  is  usually  a  profitable  trade  to  be  a 
Condotti  n  m&ster  of  trained  warriors  and  to  let  them  out 
and  mercen-  for  hire.  In  Italy  men  of  enterprising  mind  saw 
ary  armies,  fofa  opportunity  and  induced  soldiers  of  fortune 
to  follow  their  banners  for  pay  and  for  hope  of  plunder. 
Men  who  kept  private  armies  as  a  speculative  business  were 
afterwards  known  in  Italy  as  condottieri,  and  I  will  give 
them  that  name  even  in  the  fourteenth  century,  though  I 
do  not  remember  whether  it  was  then  in  use.  In  1320  a 
condottiere  named  Castruccio  Castracani  made  himself 
master  of  his  native  city  Lucca,  only  thirty  miles  from 
Florence.  In  1325  the  tradesmen  and  hand  workers  from 
Florence  marched  out  against  him  and  were  badly  defeated. 
Thenceforward  no  city  of  Tuscany  thought  of  waging  a  war 
in  reliance  on  its  own  citizens  only.  In  a  war  of  1341 
between  Florence  and  Pisa  the  Florentines  hired  mercen- 
aries   from    thirteen    neighbouring    cities    under    civilian 


chap,  xxi.]  CITIZEN  AKMIES  371 

government:  the  Pisans  got  troops  from  the  tyrants  of 
northern  Italy.1  Both  armies  were  bad,  but  the  men  hired 
by  Florence  were  the  worse,  and  were  worse  commanded: 
when  they  had  victory  in  their  hands  they  took  fright  and 
ran  away. 

The  Pisans  and  their   allies  won  a  victory  but  had  no 
intention  of  doing  more  than  making  the  Florentines  harm- 
less, or  perhaps  compelling  them  to  pay  some  T  r  nn 
money,   of   which    they  had  plenty.      To    the   Florence, 
Florentines  their  defeat  would  have  been  trivial   I342"1343- 
if  they  had  had  any  manly  courage,  but  they  had  none.     In 
their  terror  they  took  as  tyrant  Walter  de  Brienne,  a  French 
adventurer,  who  had  married  a  niece  of  Robert  King  of 
Naples,  and  was  called  Duke  of  Athens. 

After  about  eighteen  months  Walter  de  Brienne  was 
intolerable  to  all  classes  except  his  favourites,  and  all  classes 
combined  to  expel  him.  After  they  were  rid  of  Government 
him,  the  seven  greater  arts  in  1343  made  an  of  the  middle 
attempt  to  admit  the  nobili,  who  since  1292  had  arts>  I343. 
been  disqualified  for  office,  to  some  share  of  I358- 
influence,  hoping,  we  may  conjecture,  that  they  might 
infuse  a  little  martial  courage  into  the  citizens.  Hereupon 
the  nine  lowest  arts,  which  had  never  had  any  share  in  the 
government,  stirred  the  hand  workers  to  revolt,  burned 
palaces  of  nobles,  and  insisted  on  having  places  among  the 
Priori.  A  board  of  eight  Priori  was  established:  the  nine 
lowest  arts  had  three  seats,  the  five  middle  arts  had  three, 
and  the  greatest  arts  had  only  two.  Giovanni  Villani  says 
explicitly  that  power  belonged  to  the  mediani,  that  is  to 
say  to  the  middle  and  the  lowest  arts.  From  1343  to  1358 
the  rulers  of  the  city  were  even  more  timid  and  incapable 
than  any  of  their  predecessors. 

But  from  1343  the  popolani  grassi  of  the  greater  arts 

1  Perreus,  Hist.  Flor. ,  4.  230-232,  especially  232  n.  4. 


372  THE  PARTE  [chap.  xxi. 

were  discontented   at   having   only  two   seats  among   the 
Priori,   and   preferred   to    act  as  members   rather   of   the 

Parte  Guelfa  than  of  the  Florentine  coromon- 
of  the  Parte  wealth.  In  order  to  strengthen  the  Parte  Guelfa 
Guelfa,  1358-    thgy  brought  back  into  use  the  word  Ghibeline. 

What  the  word  meant  no  one  could  say.  It 
had  till  1268  meant  an  adherent  of  the  Hohenstaufer, 
and  afterwards  an  adherent  of  nobles  who  were  powerful  in 
the  contado.  But  since  1268  there  were  no  Hohenstaufer, 
and  since  1289  there  were  no  country  nobles.  It  is  perhaps 
just  possible  that  in  1343  it  was  thought  applicable  to  any 
one  who  favoured  the  tyrants  in  the  Lombard  cities.  But 
in  1346  the  popolani  grassi  got  a  pretext  for  using  it  in  its 
old  sense  to  denote  a  partisan  of  a  Kaiser:  for  then  Karl 
the  Fourth,  hereditary  king  of  Bohemia  and  elected  king  of 
Germany,  resolved  that  next  year  he  would  march  into 
Italy  and  be  crowned  emperor.  In  January  1347  the 
popolani  grassi  persuaded  the  Priori  to  propose  and  the 
councils  to  sanction  a  new  law  against  Ghibelines.  The  law 
ran  that  every  one  who  since  1300  had  been  a  Ghibeline,  or 
was  descended  in  a  male  line  from  any  one  who  since  that 
date  had  been  a  Ghibeline,  should  be  disqualified  from 
bearing  office,  and  if  he  took  it  shonld  pay  a  very  heavy 
fine.  In  1358  the  captains  of  the  Parte  Guelfa,  which  was 
then  managed  by  popolani  grassi,  accused  candidates  for 
office  of  Ghibeline  proclivities  or  of  Ghibeline  descent,  and 
got  twenty  three  convictions.  From  1358  to  1375  they 
deterred  any  man  whom  they  disliked  from  seeking  office 
by  sending  him  a  warning  (ammonizione)  that  if  he  sought 
it  he  would  be  accused  of  being  a  Ghibeline,  and  by  this 
simple  process  enjoyed  for  seventeen  years  complete  control 
over  the  rulers  of  the  city. 

We  do  not  know  precisely  how  the   succession  to  the 
captaincies  in  the  Parte  Guelfa  was  regulated.     In  1335  the 


chap,  xxi.]  GUELFA  373 

Parte  Guelfa  had  resolved  that  the  captains  should  bear 
office  only  for  two  months  at  a  time,  but  provided  a  means 
by  which  those  who  had  once  served  well  should   „ 

*  _  Compara- 

be  sure  of  returning  frequently  to  the  captaincy.1  tively 
After  1358  it  seems  likely  that  the  captains  may  V1^°err0nu^ent 
have  been  practically  permanent  officials:  they   of  the 
were   certainly  not  so   cowardly  as  the  Priori.   cap  ams' 
Their  mercenaries  in  1362  seized  the  chain  of  the  Porto 
Pisano    which    still    adorns   the    walls   of    the    Baptistery 
at  Florence :   in  1363  nine  thousand  citizens  of  Florence 
actually  marched  a  mile  or  two  outside  their  city  walls  and 
so  astonished  an  army  of  mercenaries  hired  by  Pisa  that  it 
ran  away.     But  the  authority  of  the  captains  rested  solely 
on  their  practice  of  frightening  men  with  menaces  of  false 
accusations,  and  its  foundations  might  easily  be  shaken. 

By  the  year  1375  many  classes  among  the  Florentines 
disliked  the  usurped  power  of  the  captains.  The  lesser  and 
middle  arts  had  always  hated  them,  because  the 

...  liii  Discontent  of 

ammoniziom  were  most  commonly  addressed  to   the  arts  and 

their  members :  many  of  the  popolani  grassi  had   the  hand 
J  L    r  °  workers. 

suffered  in  like  manner,  and  there  was  a  general 
opposition  between  the  arts  and  the  captains.  The  attitude 
of  the  hand  workers  who  were  not  members  of  any  art  was 
uncertain :  they  disliked  both  the  captains  and  the  rulers  of 
the  greater  arts,  but  it  was  doubtful  which  they  disliked  the 
more  heartily.  They  numbered  certainly  thirteen  thousand 
and  probably  more :  nine  thousand  employed  by  members  of 
the  arte  di  lana  were  known  by  the  name  ciompi,  of  which 
the  derivation  is  uncertain,  and  hence  the  handicraftsmen 
generally  were  often  called  ciompi.  The  chief  grievance  of 
the  hand  workers  was  that  all  questions  regarding  their  pay 
were  decided  by  a  judge  nominated  by  the  art  under  which 

1  The  constitution  of  the  Parte  made  in  1335  is  printed  in  Giornale  storico 
degli  archivi  Toscani,  Jan. -March,  1857.     See  Perrens,  4.  483  foil. 


374  THE  CIOMPI  [chap.  xxi. 

they  served,  and  might  therefore  be  decided  unfairly :  they 
desired  to  form  arts  of  their  own  with  judges  of  their  own 
and  a  share  in  the  government. 

From  1375  to  1378  Pope  Gregory  the  Eleventh,  a  French- 
man but  resident  in  Rome,  waged  a  senseless  war  by  means 
of  his  mercenaries  against  the  mercenaries   in 
eight  the  pay  of  Florence.     As   the   Popes   were  by 

ministers         tradition  patrons  of  the  Parte  Guelfa,  the  war 

for  war.  x  . 

against  Gregory  could  not  conveniently  be  con- 
ducted by  the  captains.  As  far  back  as  1362  there  had 
been  at  Florence  a  board  of  eight  charged  with  the 
superintendence  of  the  mercenaries,  and  called  Gli  Otto 
delta  Guerra.1  In  1375  the  Florentines  elected  a  new 
board  for  managing  the  same  business  and  gave  them  large 
powers.  The  Eight,  having  to  attend  to  work  that  affected 
the  whole  commonwealth,  and  remaining  continuously  in 
office,  were  by  far  the  best  rulers  that  the  Florentines  had 
ever  known,  and  were  popularly  called  Gli  Otto  Santi,  the 
Eight  Holy  Men.  When  the  war  ended  the  Eight  quietly 
laid  down  their  powers,  and  the  captains  issued  ammonizioni 
more  recklessly  than  ever :  but  the  citizens  had  seen  that 
among  the  Eight  there  were  men  who  could  be  trusted,  and 
among  the  captains  and  their  henchmen  the  Priori  there 
were  none. 

The  men  among  the  Eight  in  whom  the  citizens  put  most 
confidence  were  four  members  of  greater  arts  belonging  to 

the  houses  of  Medici,  Alberti,  Strozzi,  and  Scali. 

Two  of  these  men  proposed  most  moderate  new 
laws,  intended  to  set  some  small  check  on  the  caprices  of  the 
captains.  An  attempt  was  made  by  the  captains  to  get  the 
laws  rejected,  but  the  ciompi  formed  a  mob  to  surround  the 
council  chamber,  got  the  laws  passed,  and  burned  the  houses 
of  the  captains. 

1  Matteo  Villani,  Book  xi.  ch.  10. 


chap,  xxi.]  MICHEL  DI  LANDO  375 

The  ciompi  insisted  that  they  should  be  recognised  as  an 
art,  and  that  the  Priori  should  abdicate :  then,  acting  on  a 
sudden  impulse,  they  chose  Michel  di  Lando,  a   Michel  di 
humble  woolcomber,  to  be  their  gonfalonier,  and    Lando,  1378. 
to  direct  their  measures.     He  turned  out  to  be  the  only 
courageous  ruler  that  Florence  ever  produced.      He  first 
induced  his  comrades  to  recognise  some  well-known  citizens 
as  his  councillors :  and  it  seems  to  me  that  it  would  have 
been  a  happy  thing  for  Florence  if  he  had  stopped  there  and 
ruled  with  his  council  till  he  had  established  a  government 
with  some  strength  at  its  back.     He  was,  however,  so  free 
from  personal  ambition  that  he  called  a  Parlamento  which 
gave  balia  or  plenary  power  to  a  small  group  of  men  to  form 
a  provisional  government.     Those  men  who  worked  for  hire 
but  were  not  ciompi  under  the  arte  di  lana  were  made  into 
two  new  guilds,  making  twenty  four  guilds  in  all.     Then  a 
bad  blunder  was  made :  a  board  of  nine  Priori  was  appointed, 
without  any  provision  for  lengthening  their  term  of  office  or 
ensuring  that  they  should  not  be,  as  all  Priori  hitherto  had 
been,  afraid  of  their  successors.     Four  labourers  were  chosen, 
three  from  the  lesser  and  middle  arts,  and  only  two  from  the 
popolani  grassi.     Michel  himself  was  continued  in  his  office 
of  gonfalonier,  which   gave  him   a  place  at  the  board  of 
Priori. 

The  arte  di  lana  was  indignant  because  only  two  Priori 
had  been  chosen  from  the  greater  arts,  and  locked  out  the 
handicraftsmen  from  its  bottiche.     The  workmen 
took  arms  and  set  up  a  separate  government  of  Lando  in 
their  own  at  Santa  Maria  Novella,  in  opposition   conflict  with 

the  ciompi. 

to  Michel  and  his  Priori  at  the  Palace.     When 
the  government  of  the  workmen  demanded  that  eight  of  its 
members  should  be  admitted  to  sit  as  equals  with  the  Priori, 
the  nine  Priori  tamely  assented:   but  Michel  went  forth 
sword  in  hand  on  to  the  Piazza,  and  finding  support  from 


376  TYEANNIS  AT  FLORENCE  [chap.  xxi. 

men  who  belonged  to  the  twenty  one  old  trade  guilds 
scattered  the  ciompi  and  drove  their  leaders  into  the 
contado. 

The  error  that  had  been  committed  in  setting  up  the 
board  of  nine  Priori  with  no  force  behind  them  could  not 
Tyrannis  ^e  undone,  and  the  great  revolt  of  the  ciompi 
1434-1494-  produced  no  permanent  improvement  in  the 
government :  nothing  probably  would  have  done  any  good 
except  an  external  war  so  serious  as  to  compel  the 
effeminate  citizens  to  act  like  men,  and  shed  their  blood  if 
need  be  in  defence  of  their  bottiche.  After  1378  the  Priori 
were  even  more  easily  managed  than  their  predecessors,  and 
a  few  very  rich  men  were  able  to  manipulate  elections  and 
law  making,  without  pretending  as  the  captains  had  done, 
that  they  were  acting  as  patriots  on  behalf  of  the  Parte 
Guelfa.  Thus  the  power  of  the  trade  guilds  came  to  an  end. 
From  1393  power  belonged  now  to  an  Albizzi,  now  to  a 
Medici,  now  to  a  Ricci :  in  1434  Cosimo  di  Medici  returned 
from  exile  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  was  master  of  the 
commonwealth.  After  his  death  in  1464  his  power  was 
handed  on  to  his  son  and  then  to  his  two  grandsons :  all  the 
Medici  till  1494  ruled  as  mild  tyranni  after  the  manner  of 
Peisistratus. 

Bologna  like  Florence  was  an  industrial  city,  but  from 
1237  to  1250  it  needed  to  protect  itself  against  the  Kaiser 
Frederic  the  Second,  and  from  about  1275  for  two 
generations  feared  attack  from  a  Visconti  at 
Milan  or  a  della  Scala  at  Verona.  Hence  its  citizens  were 
soldiers  as  well  as  traders:  moreover  they  took  as  much 
pride  in  their  great  university  of  jurists  as  in  their  com- 
mercial prosperity,  and  they  did  not  treat  their  contado 
as   a   negligible  quantity.1     They  had   trade  guilds   called 

1  The  chief  authorities  for   Bologna  are  Gron.  di  Bologna  in  Muratori, 
R.I.S.,  vol.  18,  and  Gaudenzi,  Statuti  di  Bologna,  published  in  1888. 


chap,  xxi.]  BOLOGNA  377 

societates  artium,  but  they  had  also  societates  armorum,  or 
societates  pro  armis.1  They  had  a  board  of  anziani  et  con- 
sules  drawn  from  their  societates,  which  conducted  the 
daily  business  of  government,  but  they  had  also  a  podesta 
and  a  captain  of  the  people  and  a  council  of  eight  hundred, 
and  a  council  of  the  whole  people : 2  when  serious  disputes 
arose  they  were  decided  by  the  podesta  with  the  council  of 
the  people.3  In  1274  the  Bolognese  expelled  the  family  of  the 
Lambertazzi,  the  heads  of  the  Ghibelines  in  the  city,*  but 
did  not  exclude  all  nobili  from  influence,  as  the  Florentines 
did  eighteen  years  later.  The  nobili,  being  allowed  to 
remain  in  the  city  and  to  get  a  large  share  of  power,  brought 
them  to  distress  and  weakness  on  several  occasions  in  the 
next  half  century :  and  after  about  1325  the  citizens  were  so 
much  alarmed  at  the  power  of  the  Visconti  at  Milan,  of  the 
della  Scala  at  Verona,  and  of  Castruccio  Castracani  at 
Lucca,  that  they  took  a  force  of  mercenaries,  mainly 
Germans,  into  their  service.  In  1337  Taddeo  di  Pepoli, 
having  gained  great  popularity  among  the  poorer  citizens 
and  also  with  the  mercenaries,  forcibly  assumed  the  position 
of  Signor  of  the  city.  He  took  precautions  for  his  personal 
safety,  keeping  a  guard  of  mercenaries  in  barracks  that  he 
made  in  the  middle  of  the  city,  and  building  himself  a 
palace  near  the  Via  Cavalleria,  which  still  retains  its  name : 
but  his  government  was  effective,  and  seems  to  have  been 
far  less  unfair  and  vexatious  than  any  of  the  many  different 
kinds  of  government  which  existed  in  Florence  while  he 
ruled  over  Bologna.5 

1  The  clearest  list  of  the  societates  artium  et  armorum  is  that  for  1292, 
given  in  Gaudenzi,  207,  and  following  pages.  Societates  pro  armis  are 
mentioned,  246,  247. 

2  Gaudenzi,  113. 

3  Cron.  di  Bologna,  passim. 

4  Gaudenzi,  52,  53. 

5  All  these  details  about  Taddeo  di  Pepoli  are  taken  direct  from  the 
interesting  narrative  in  the  Cron.  di  Bologna,  in  Muratori,  R.I.S.,  vol.  18. 


378  ABSENCE  OF  [chap.  xxi. 

The  cities  in  the  valleys  of  the  Po  and  the  Adige  may 
next  engage  our  attention  for  a  few  moments.  Till  about 
_        . .        1300   most   of   them   were    torn   with   internal 

Tyranm  in 

northern         dissensions :  after  that  ambitious  citizens  estab- 
a  y'  lished  in  them  purely  urban  tyrannies,  somewhat 

different  from  the  tyrannies  which  Eccelin  da  Romano  had 
established  between  1226  and  1237  in  Treviso,  Vicenza  and 
Verona.  Eccelin  had  drawn  his  strength  at  least  in  part 
from  his  petty  vassals  who  lived  on  his  country  fiefs : 
the  new  tyrannies  after  1300  were  upheld  by  bands  of 
mercenaries  enrolled  from  outside  the  cities,  but  quartered 
in  the  cities  to  protect  their  masters.  The  tyrants  were  as 
good  rulers  as  their  effeminate  subjects  deserved:  many  of 
them  were  lords  of  large  groups  of  cities  for  many  genera- 
tions. The  most  powerful  dynasties  were  those  of  the 
Visconti  and  their  descendants  the  Sforzas  at  Milan,  and 
the  della  Scala  at  Verona. 

Both  in  the  valley  of  the  Po  and  in  central  Italy  the  only 
men  who  could  fight  a  battle  in  an  open  field  were  the 
„  mercenaries,  among  whom  few  were  of  Italian 

Few  wars :  .   . 

innumerable  extraction.  The  cities  near  the  Alps  had  their 
mercenaries  within  their  walls:  the  cities 
about  the  Apennine  range  except  Bologna  after  1337 
kept  them  outside.  Neither  the  princes  in  the  north 
nor  the  citizens  in  Tuscany  could  wage  any  really  re- 
munerative wars  because  their  armies  were  composed  of 
mercenaries  and  could  not  be  trusted:  but  both  princes 
and  peoples  constantly  conceived  hopes  that  they  could 
undertake  a  war  with  profit:  and  consequently  they 
formed  numberless  vain  leagues  and  alliances.  Diplomatic 
correspondence  was  carried  on  more  actively  during  the 
fourteenth  century  in  Italy,  and  treaties  were  made 
in  greater  abundance,  than  ever  before  in  the  world's 
history. 


chap,  xxi.]  MANLY  COURAGE  379 


Period  III.  1494-1530.     Subjugation  of  the 

INLAND  CITIES 

From  1494  till  1530  Italy  was  often  attacked  by  external 
aggressors.  An  invasion  by  Charles  the  Eighth  of  France 
in  1494  produced  no  considerable  transfers  of  ,       . 

1  Invasions  of 

territory.  At  the  end  of  1499  Louis  the  Twelfth  Italy,  1404- 
of  France  conquered  Milan  and  the  cities  de-  ISI5' 
pendent  on  it  and  held  them  for  twelve  years.  In  1501 
Louis  agreed  with  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  to  join  with  him 
in  an  attack  on  Naples  on  condition  that  the  two  partners 
in  the  enterprise  should  divide  the  conquered  territory. 
They  overran  all  the  Neapolitan  kingdom  and  each  took 
half:  but  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  had  a  great  advantage  over 
his  confederate.  Louis  could  not  send  a  fresh  army  from 
France  to  Naples  except  by  a  long  and  toilsome  march 
across  the  Alps  and  the  Apennines :  Ferdinand  could  send 
reinforcements  from  his  kingdom  of  Sicily  close  at  hand,  or 
at  worst  by  a  sea  voyage  of  only  about  seven  hundred  miles 
from  Barcelona.  The  Spanish  commander  in  South  Italy, 
Gonsalvo  de  Cordova,  el  Gran  Capitan,  was  stronger  than 
the  French,  and  by  1503  he  had  secured  the  whole  of  the 
Neapolitan  dominions  for  his  master  Ferdinand.  In  1512 
Louis  the  Twelfth  lost  the  Milanese  territory,  and  it  went 
to  Maximilian  Sforza,  son  of  the  last  native  Milanese  duke  : 
but  in  1515  Francis  the  First  of  France  recovered  it  and 
was  holding  it  when  Charles  heir  of  the  dukes  of  Burgundy 
and  of  the  Austrian  Habsburgs  and  of  the  sovereigns  of 
Castile  and  Aragon  and  Sicily  and  Naples  entered  into 
possession  of  all  his  dominions,  and  in  1520  acquired  also 
the  titles  of  German  King  and  Kaiser. 

In  1522  Charles  began  competing  with  the  king  of  France 
for  the  mastery  over  northern  Italy.     The  townsmen  of  the 


380  STATO  [chap.  xxi. 

inland  cities  had  completely  lost  the  practice  of  defending 

themselves  in   arms,  and   the   men   of  each   city  were  so 

jealous  of  other  cities  that  they  would  not  join 

the  inland       with  them  in  firm  alliance.     Thus  the  cities  of 

towns,  Italy  were  as  helpless  as  the  Greek  cities  had 

1522-1530.  •  . 

been  in  the  presence  of  Philip  of  Macedonia,  and 

from  the  same  causes :  it  was  therefore  certain  that  one  or 
other  of  the  two  external  powers  would  be  their  master. 
Charles  had  the  great  advantage  of  a  strong  advanced  position 
in  the  kingdom  of  Naples  :  he  drew  a  large  revenue  from  the 
prosperous  trade  of  the  townsmen  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
he  had  a  far  larger  recruiting  ground  in  his  own  territories 
than  his  opponent.  By  1530  he  was  master  of  the  inland 
cities:  Milan  and  its  dependent  towns  he  annexed  to  his 
own  dominions;  the  other  inland  cities  he  gave  to  princes 
whom  he  expected  to  obey  his  orders. 

During  the  fifteenth  century  and  till  1515,  when  Francis 
the  First  marched  across  the  Alps,  treaties  and  alliances  were 
The  word  made  by  cities  or  by  tyrants  of  cities  even  more 
'state'  frequently  than  in  the  fourteenth  century.     In 

the  process  of  making  the  treaties  or  of  considering  the 
rights  which  they  conferred  on  the  contracting  parties,  it 
is  probable  that  the  diplomatic  agents  or  the  advisers  of 
rulers  needed  some  word  that  would  denote  equally  well 
any  of  the  contracting  parties  to  a  treaty ;  it  is  certain  that 
they  took  into  use  the  word  stato,  and  could  denote  by  it 
either  a  city  or  a  kingdom,  either  a  republican  government 
or  a  despotic  ruler.  Machiavelli  the  first  author  of  con- 
spicuous genius  who  employs  the  word  was  himself  employed 
more  frequently  in  negotiating  treaties  than  any  of  his 
contemporaries. 

It  is  not  obvious  how  the  word  stato  acquired  its  new 
meaning :  but  an  attempt  may  be  made  to  trace  its  history. 
The  Roman  jurists  from  the  age  of  the  Antonines  used  the 


chap,  xxi.]  STATUS  381 

technical  terms  status   liberi  hominis,  status  libertini  to 
denote  the  rights  and  obligations  inherent  in  all   freeborn 
men  or  in  all  freedmen,  apart  from  any  rights 
which  a  particular   freeborn  man  or  freedman   < status': 
might  have  acquired  under  contracts  of  his  own   Roman 

.  •  .  .  usage. 

making  and  from  any  obligations  which  he  might 
have  incurred  by  contracts.1  From  the  fifth,  century  to  the 
end  of  the  eleventh  the  works  of  the  Roman  jurists  were 
unknown  in  western  Europe  except  possibly  to  a  few  scholars, 
and  during  that  interval  I  have  not  observed  that  the  word 
status  was  used  in  any  technical  sense.  Early  in  the  twelfth 
century  Ivo  of  Chartres,  who  died  in  1117,  was  acquainted 
with  some  passages  from  Roman  lawyers  which  are  con- 
tained in  Justinian's  Digest  About  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century  a  copy  of  nearly  the  whole  Digest  was 
discovered.  From  that  time  the  study  of  the  Roman  law 
was  revived  at  Bologna,  at  Paris,  and  elsewhere.  From 
passages  which  I  proceed  to  cite  it  will  be  seen  that  from 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  status  could  denote 
rights  inherent  in  a  person  or  a  class,  and  that  in  the 
fourteenth  it  was  transferred  to  mean  a  class  or  a  com- 
munity in  which  distinctive  rights  were  inherent. 

In  1244  Pope  Innocent  the  Fourth,  in  a  sentence  so  long 
that  towards  the  end  of  it  he  forgot  what  grammatical 
construction  he  had  intended  to  give  it,  speaks  of  „  J. 

■  r  n       Mediaeval 

the  status  et  honor  of  the  English  prelates :  and  in  usages  of  the 
the  same  year  a  council  of  English  barons,  when  word  status- 
they  order  that  those  persons  whose  liberties  have  been 
infringed  since  the  last  charter  shall  recover  their  rights, 
say  Status  eorum  reformetur?     In  1301  the  English  barons 


1  Passages   from  early    jurists    in  Justinian,  Digest,   1.   5.,    'De  Statu 
Hominum.' 

2  Matth.  Paris,  Cron.  Maj.,  Rolls  Series,  vol.  4,  p.  364,  five  lines  from 
end,  and  p.  366,  eight  lines  from  end. 


382  LITERATURE  AND  ART  [chap.  xxi. 

in  the  most  important  letter  that  they  ever  wrote,  speak  to 
Boniface  the  Eighth  of  the  king's  status  and  his  regia 
dignitas  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  the  two  terms  are 
equivalent.1  In  1339  Edward  the  Third  in  writing  to 
Benedict  the  Twelfth  who  reigned  at  Avignon,  speaks  of 
status  regis  suique  populi*  In  1357  the  French  king's 
son  issued  ordinances  De  Vavis  de  notre  grand  conseil  des 
dtats  et  des  hommes  des  bonnes  villes,  thus  giving  to  the 
prelates  and  the  nobles  in  the  assembly  of  the  states  general 
the  title  of  etats  or  status?  In  the  resolution  of  the  English 
Parliament  which  deposed  Richard  the  Second  the  three 
orders  in  the  Parliament  call  themselves  status  regni  and 
twice  more  speak  of  antedicti  status  or  dicti  status*  Finally 
Machiavelli  who  died  in  1527  frequently  uses  the  word  stato 
to  denote  either  a  community  with  an  independent  govern- 
ment of  its  own,  or  a  government,  or  the  territory  owned  by 
a  tyrant  or  by  a  community.5 

In  Germany  as  in  Italy  towns  grew  up  and  became 
independent  during  the  Middle  Ages.  The  histories  of  half 
Cities  in  a  dozen  German  towns  near  the  Rhine  and  the 
Germany.  upper  Danube  have  been  investigated  and 
collected  by  Wilhelm  Arnold  in  his  important  work  Die 
Deutschen  Freistddte.  These  towns,  among  which  were 
Strassburg,  Mainz,  and  Cologne,  were  founded  by  the 
Romans.  After  the  Germans  occupied  the  western  empire 
of  the  Caesars  we  hear  little  or  nothing  of  them  for  three 
centuries  and  a  half,  and  it  is  probable  that  they  became 

1  Rishauger,  Rolls  Series,  p.  209.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  §  181,  enumerates 
in  a  note  other  places  in  which  the  letter  is  printed. 

*  Walsingham,  Rolls  Series,  1.  205,  1.  11. 

*  Lavallee,  Hist,  des  Francais,  2.  40,  from  Ordonnances  des  Bois  de  France. 

4  Walsingham,  2.  236,  237. 

5  Besides  passages  cited  in  the  margin  of  p.  3,  see  Machiavelli,  Istor.  Fior., 
book  3,  ch.  16,  ch.  17.  In  II  Principe,  ch.  5,  uno  stato  di  pochi  is  a 
translation  of  the  Greek  oligarchia.  Therefore  in  this  passage  stato  means 
merely  gorernment. 


chap,  xxi.]  IN  MEDIEVAL  TOWNS  383 

unimportant.  But  after  the  missionary  Boniface  in  the 
eighth  century  had  persuaded  the  Germans  to  the  east  of 
the  Rhine  to  become  Catholic  Christians,  the  towns  received 
bishops  and  came  to  life  again.  Till  about  1300  they  were 
ruled  by  their  bishops  or  by  officers  whom  the  bishops 
appointed:  but,  inasmuch  as  they  were  surrounded  by 
warlike  secular  princelets,  the  bishops  could  not  forbid  the 
townsmen  the  use  of  arms.  From  about  1400  the  towns 
became  independent  of  their  bishops,  and  were  ruled  by 
trade  guilds :  but,  since  the  townsmen  were  compelled  on 
occasion  to  take  up  arms  and  defend  themselves  from 
external  foes,  they  never  fell,  like  the  Lombard  towns,  under 
tyranni,  nor,  like  Florence,  under  the  arbitrary  power  of 
tradesmen  devoid  of  courage  and  skill  in  governing. 

In  the  towns  of  Italy  individual  citizens  excelled  both 
in  arts  and  in  literature :  in  the  German  towns  were  found 
painters,  sculptors  and  workers  in  metal.  Florence  Literary  and 
alone  between  1300  and  1530  produced  Dante,  artistic  ex- 
Giovanni  Villani,  Boccaccio,  and  Machiavelli :  mediaeval 
in  all  the  rest  of  Europe  the  best  writers  within  townsmen, 
the  same  limits  of  time  were  Froissart,  Chaucer,  Malory,  and 
Comines.  The  Flemish  town  of  Bruges,  which  at  times  was 
almost  independent,  was  the  home  of  the  painters  John  and 
Hubert  Van  Eyck ;  Ntirnberg  of  Albrecht  Dtirer,  of  Adam 
Krafft,  and  of  Peter  Vischer.  The  painters  born  and  bred 
in  Italian  cities  were  too  many  to  enumerate,  but  it  is 
certain  that  they  have  given  more  delight  to  the  eyes  of  men 
than  the  painters  of  any  other  region  at  any  time  in  the 
world's  history.  In  the  peoples  of  Europe  that  were  not 
urban  I  do  not  know  by  name  any  master  of  an  art  who 
lived  between  1300  and  1530  except  Alan  de  Walsingham, 
the  architect  at  Ely  of  the  Lady  Chapel  and  of  Prior 
Craudene's  Chapel  and  of  the  octagonal  dome  of  the 
cnthedral. 


384 


TABULAR  VIEW 


[chap.  XXI. 


As  the  inland  towns  in  Italy  were  many  and  were 
collected  in  two  groups  whose  histories  were  not  alike,  I 
think  it  well  to  exhibit  the  communities  in  a 
tabular  form.  The  communities  in  the  several 
towns  are  placed  in  abbreviated  pedigrees, 
after  the  method  that  was  adopted  in  the 
twelfth  chapter  in  tabulating  the  Greek  urban 
bodies  politic  and  their  governments. 


General  yiew 
of  inland 
urban  com- 
munities in 
mediaeval 
Italy. 


COMMUNITIES  IN  THE  INLAND  TOWNS  OF 
MEDIAEVAL  ITALY 


Communities. 
Growp  1. — In  Milan  and  in  each 

of  the  other  large  inland  towns 

of  northern  Italy, 
(a)  Till    1237    a    succession   of    Consuls 

communities,  commercial  but 

also  warlike. 


Governments. 


(b)  After  1300  a  succession  of    Tyranni. 
communities,  purely  commer- 
cial and  effeminate. 


Group   2. — In  towns  of   central 

Italy. 
(1)  In  Florence. 
(a)  Till    1292    a    succession    of    Anziani   till  1282. 

communities,  industrial,  com 

mercial  and  warlike. 


Then  six 
Priori,  selected  from  the  dis- 
tinguished members  of  trades 
guilds  by  the  outgoing  Priori, 
and  holding  office  only  for  two 
months. 


CHAP.    XXI.] 


OF  INLAND  TOWNS 


385 


COMMUNITIES   IN   THE   INLAND  TOWNS  OF  MEDIAEVAL 
ITALY. — Continued. 


Communities. 


Governments. 


(b)  After  1320  a  succession  of   Class    governments   of    various 
communities  purely  commer-        sorts  : 
cial  and  industrial,  and  miser-    (1)  Heads  of  trades  guilds, 
ably  effeminate.  (2)  Captains  of  the  Parte  Guelfa. 

(3)  Mild  tyrannis  of  the  Medici 
family. 


(2)  In  Bologna,  which  resembled 
Florence,  but  was  more  ex- 
posed to  attack  from  outside. 

(a)  Till  1300  a  succession  of  com- 
munities equally  attentive  to 
commerce  and  to  military  ex- 
cellence. 


A  podesta  carefully  chosen  by 
commissioners,  a  large  council, 
and  a  general  council. 


(b)  After  1325  a  succession  of  Tyrannis,  mild  under  Taddeo  di 
commercial  and  un warlike  Pepoli,  from  1401  ordinary 
communities.  tyrannis  under  the  Bentivogli. 


2  b 


CHAPTER  XXII 

MEDLEVAL   CITIES:    (2)  MARITIME   CITIES   POSSESSING 
IMPORTANT  TERRITORY   OUTSIDE   THEIR   WALLS 

The  maritime  cities  of  Italy  in  the  Middle  Ages  were  Venice, 
Genoa,  and  till  1284  Pisa:  after  1284,  when  the  Pisan  fleet  was 
destroyed  by  the  Genoese  off  Meloria,  Pisa  differed  but  little 
from  the  inland  cities.  Hence  Venice  and  Genoa  are  the 
only  maritime  cities  that  we  need  consider.  Venice  till  the 
fourteenth  century  had  no  territory  in  Italy  except  the 
edges  of  its  lagoons,  and  was  entirely  maritime.  Genoa 
from  its  beginning  cared  almost  as  much  for  its  lands  in 
Italy  as  for  its  adventures  on  the  sea.  Genoa  then  stood 
in  less  sharp  contrast  than  Venice  with  the  inland  cities  dis- 
cussed in  my  last  chapter :  for  that  reason  Genoa  shall  next 
occupy  our  attention. 

Genoa  has  the  only  good  natural  harbour  on  the  Ligurian 
coast,  and  on  each  side  of  the  harbour  it  has  a  larger 
Genoa-  patch  of   fairly  level    ground   than    is    to  be 

progress  to     found  elsewhere  in  the  neighbourhood.     Hence 
it  came  about  that   the   Genoese  were  power- 
ful both  ashore  and  afloat.    Before  1100,  when  they  began 
to   employ    an   official   historiographer,1   they    owned    the 

1  From  1100  to  1293  the  official  annals  printed  in  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.,  vol. 
18,  are  the  authorities  for  Genoese  history  :  after  1293  Georgio  Stella  in 
Muratori,  Rer.  It.  Script.  From  these  authorities  all  my  statements  are 
taken  direct,  except  possibly  a  few  relating  to  Pope  Innocent  the  Fourth. 
My  dates  serve  as  references  to  the  passages  in  the  annals. 
386 


chap,  xxil]  GENOA  387 

coast  for  twenty  miles  to  the  east  of  thein  as  far  as  Chiavari, 
and  to  the  west  for  ten  miles  as  far  as  Volturi :  the  force 
that  they  sent  in  twenty  six  galleys  and  six  sailing  ships  to 
join  in  the  first  Crusade  was  so  strong  that  in  1100  the 
promise  of  its  zealous  support  induced  Baldwin  to  accept 
the  kingdom  of  Jerusalem.  In  1121  they  purchased  Vul- 
tabium  (Voltaggio)  which  commands  the  pass  over  the 
Apennine  range  fifteen  miles  to  the  north  of  their  city, 
and  thus  became  masters  of  the  hill  country  in  their 
neighbourhood:  in  1147-8  they  joined  in  a  crusade  against 
the  Moors  of  Almeria  in  Andalusia.  Between  1100  and 
1150  they  also  by  bribing  a  Pope  and  some  Papal  officials 
gained  some  degree  of  control  in  the  island  of  Corsica:1 
but  it  does  not  seem  that  their  influence  in  the  island  was 
yet  very  important  to  them,  because  their  annalists  say 
little  about  it.  In  1140  they  built  a  fort  at  Vintimilia 
seventy  miles  to  the  west  of  Genoa,  and  thus  they  had  a  good 
prospect  of  acquiring  the  whole  western  Kiviera.  But  in  1154 
the  advent  of  the  Kaiser  Frederic  Barbarossa  in  Italy  so 
strengthened  the  markgrafs  around  Vintimilia  that  in  1158 
the  Genoese  were  expelled  from  their  fortress.  From  that  time 
for  half  a  century  the  acquisition  of  territory  by  the  Genoese 
was  checked  by  the  influence  of  Hohenstaufen  Kaisers. 

From  1100  till  1134  Genoa  was  divided  into  seven 
companies,  seemingly  local  wards,  after  1134  into  eight 
companies.  The  companies  elected  consuls,  Genoa. 
but  whether  the  men  recognised  as  members  government, 
of  the  companies  and  thus  qualified  to  take  part  *  II9°* 
in  elections  were  the  rich  only  or  included  all  classes  is  not 
stated  by  the  annalists.  Till  1190  consuls,  whose  number 
was  not  always  the  same,  were  governors  of  the  city :  they 

1  Caffaro,  ad  ann.  1123,  pages  18-21,  text  and  notes,  in  the  edition  of 
Caffaro  by  Belgrano  in  Fonti  per  la  Storia  d'ltalia.  This  edition  of  Caffaro 
is  more  handy  than  the  great  folio  volume  18  of  M.  G.  H. 


388  GENOA  [chap.  xxii. 

judged  suits,  initiated  foreign  policy,  and  often  commanded 
in  war.  By  1190  the  consuls  were  divided  into  consules  de 
communi,  conductors  of  the  policy  of  the  city,  and  consules 
de  placitis,  judges  in  suits  and  trials. 

In  1189  Henry  the  Sixth,  son  of  Barbarossa  and  Kaiser, 
became  king  of  Sicily  in  the  right  of  his  wife  Constance, 
Genoa,  but  was  °PP°sed  by  the  Sicilians  under  Tancred. 

11Q1-1216.  In  the  next  year  he  desired  the  help  of  the 
Genoese  fleet  for  the  reduction  of  the  Sicilians,  and  in 
order  to  obtain  it  promised  the  Genoese  that  he  would  give 
them  Syracuse  and  some  other  harbours.  The  Genoese 
agreed  to  help  with  their  ships,  and  in  1191  in  order  to 
deal  with  their  foreign  affairs  and  their  new  responsibilities 
chose  a  podesta  in  lieu  of  the  consules  de  communi.  By 
1194  Henry  with  the  aid  of  the  Genoese  had  got  possession 
of  Sicily,  but  he  repudiated  his  promise  in  regard  to 
Syracuse  and  the  harbours,  and  treated  Genoese  merchants 
and  seamen  with  extreme  harshness,  so  that  the  official 
Genoese  annalist  of  the  time,  Ottobon  by  name,  says  Im- 
perator  erga  civitatem  Januce  nerozavit.  Thenceforward  the 
Genoese  were  determined  foes  of  the  Hohenstaufen  dynasty. 
From  1191  to  1216  they  had  sometimes  a  podesta,  sometimes 
consules  de  communi:  from  1196  onward  in  any  year  when 
there  was  a  podesta  there  was  also  a  board  of  eight  Rectores 
who  superintended  finance  and  the  fleet  and  the  army. 

From   1214   a  new  Hohenstaufen    Kaiser   Frederic   the 

Second  was  formidable  to  all  his  foes  because  his  Guelf 

.    .      rival  Otto  the  Fourth  had  been  defeated  by  the 

Genoa  in  the  • 

time  of  the      French  king  at  the  battle  of  Bouvines:  and  it 

Kaiser  Fred-  Wftg  not  ^  125g  tnftt  ^  Qenoege  were  qujfce  free 
eric  the  * 

Second  and  from  fear  of  the  Hohenstaufen  dynasty.  From 
till  1256.  1217  tQ   1256  the  chief  ^^  Q£  Genoa   were 

always  a  podesta  together  with  eight  Rectores  who  were 
sometimes  called   Clavigeri    or    Octo    Nobiles,   and    were 


chap,  xxil]  GENOA  389 

changed  every  year:   on  some   occasions  as  in  1238  there 

was  also  a  Plenum  Concilium  of  forty  eight  men,  to  which 

each  of  the  companies  contributed  six  councillors.     There 

was  no  lack   of  popular  control  over  the  government,  since 

Genoa  had  a  strong  army  of  citizens :  in  1234  the  citizens 

enrolled  as  soldiers  from  the  four  companies  '  towards  the 

city '  had  one  banner,  and  those  from  the  four '  towards  the 

burg '  had  another.     Hence  meetings  of  all  the  citizens  in 

Parliaments  were  not  unusual :  one  such  meeting  was  held 

in  1238  and  in  1241  there  were  four. 

The  period   from   1237,  when   the   Kaiser  Frederic   the 

Second  undertook  his  war  against  the  Lombard  cities,  till 

1256  was,  I  believe,  the  happiest  in  the  history 

of  Genoa.     The  citizens  were  all  kept  in  concord   unjted  and 

by  fear  of  the  Kaiser,  and  then  for  the  first  time   prosperous, 

.  12371256. 

but   by   no  means   for   the  last   they  gained  a 

position  of  international  importance:  they  gained  that 
position  because  their  ships  afforded  a  means  of  communic- 
ation between  Italy  and  western  Europe  whenever  the 
route  through  Lombardy  and  over  the  Alps  was  made 
impassable  by  the  presence  of  hostile  armies.  During  the 
contest  between  the  Popes  and  Frederic  the  Second  it  was 
very  desirable  more  than  once  that  a  Pope  and  the  pre- 
lates of  western  Europe  should  meet  together  either  in 
Rome  or  somewhere  in  Gaul  for  the  purpose  of  cursing  the 
Kaiser :  when  a  Pope  and  the  prelates  of  the  west  wished 
to  meet,  the  Genoese  ships  were  their  carriers.  Although 
in  1241  the  Genoese  imprudently  embarked  a  large  con- 
tingent of  bishops  from  France  on  a  weak  squadron  of  slow 
ships,  and  on  their  voyage  towards  Rome  were  robbed  of 
their  priceless  passengers,  yet  in  1244  Pope  Innocent  the 
Fourth  was  delighted  to  get  a  chance  of  being  conveyed  by 
them  from  Civita  Vecchia,  the  nearest  port  to  Rome,  to 
Genoa,  whence  he   could  easily  effect  a  junction  with  his 


390  DECLINE  OF  GENOA  [chap.  xxii. 

transalpine  allies.  From  the  beginning  in  1237  of  the 
conflict  between  the  Popes  and  the  Hohenstaufer,  and 
perhaps  from  an  earlier  date,  the  Genoese  gained  acquisitions 
of  territory.  By  1248  they  held  the  coast  to  the  east  of 
their  city  for  forty  miles  to  Levanto,  and  by  1251  they 
controlled  also  all  the  western  Riviera  for  a  hundred  miles 
to  Monaco.1  By  the  same  time  it  seems  likely  that  they 
had  little  to  fear  in  Corsica  from  rivalry  on  the  part  of  the 
Pisans :  but  I  do  not  think  that  they  cared  to  make  settle- 
ments in  the  island,  which  has  no  good  natural  harbours, 
and  could  not  attract  a  people  of  seafaring  merchants. 
Till  1256  the  urban  government  of  Genoa  was  conducted  in 
peace  and  order  by  the  podesta  and  the  eight  Rectores.  The 
hill  country  near  Genoa  was  ruled  by  Genoese  nobles  from 
their  castles,  and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  rest  of 
the  highlands  subject  to  the  republic  was  ruled  in  like 
manner : 2  the  maritime  towns  to  the  east  of  the  city  were 
governed  by  podestas  and  were  called  potestative:  and  in 
1241  and  1264  there  was  also  a  podesta  who  controlled  the 
important  Genoese  colony  in  Constantinople.3 

After  1256  Genoa  and  its  territories  were  free  from  fear  of 
external  attack.  Feuds  arose  among  its  great  nobles,  and 
^_  _  were  repeated  again  and  again  for  a  century  and 

The  Genoese,  r  &  &  J 

12561380,  a  half.  The  chronicles  do  not  tell  us  whence  the 
attack  and*  noDles  drew  their  forces,  but  it  seems  likely  that 
riven  with  they  may  have  obtained  them  from  castles  in 
the  highlands,  and  from  potestatise.  From  1270 
to  1339  the  chief  officials  were  one  or  two  captains  of  the 
people  elected  yearly:  after  1339  a  doge  was  chosen  to  hold 
office  for  life  and  to  rule  conjointly  with  an  annually  elected 
council.     Contests  for  the  chief  office  were  carried  on  so 

1  Barth.  Scrib.  in  M.  G.  H.y  SS.  18.  225  1.  11,  and  229  1.  5. 

2  Barth.  Scrib.  ad  ann.  1242,  p.  202,  mentions  four  castles  of  the  Spinola 
family  near  Genoa. 

8  Barth.  Scrib.  ad  ann.  1241,  p.  197  1.  41,  and  199  I.  55  :  also  ad  ann.  1264. 


chap,  xxii.]  THE  VENETIANS  391 

angrily  that  early  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  Genoese 
placed  themselves  under  the  lordship  of  the  king  of  France, 
who  sent  military  governors  to  control  and  protect  them. 
The  terrible  defeat  which  they  sustained  in  1380  from  the 
Venetians  at  Chioggia  contributed  to  make  them  desire 
protection  from  a  foreign  sovereign. 

The  maritime  activity  and  commercial  importance  of  the 
Venetians  before  the  time   of  Charlemagne  have  already 
been  noticed  in  the  last  chapter.1    We  now  need 
to  examine  the  structure  and  character  of  their  history, 
commonwealth.     The  earliest  writer  who  gives   Early 

.        .      authorities. 

us  a  continuous  narrative  of  Venetian  affairs  is 
John  the  Deacon,  who  lived  among   the  Venetians,  and 
before  and  about  the  year   1000  was  entrusted  with   the 
management  of  important  pieces  of  public  business  by  a 
man  who  was  then  at  the  head  of  their  government.2 

In  452  a.d.  Attila  and  his  Huns  captured  the  important 
Roman  city  of  Aquilegia,  and  sacked  Padua,  Altinum, 
Concordia,  and  Opitergium,  all  situated  on  the 

The 

mainland.3    It  is  likely  that  dread  of  the  Huns   Venetian 
may  at  this  time  have  driven  some  inhabitants  lslands  t° 

J  ;  m  550  A.D. 

of  the  mainland  to  take  refuge  in  the  miserable 
islands  of  mud  that  rose  even  at  high  tide  above  the  waters 
of  the  Venetian  lagoon,  that  the  settlers  on  each  island  may 
have  chosen  a  tribune  to  command  them,  and  that  their 
tribunes  may  have  been  some  of  those  Tribuni  Maritimi  to 

1  Page  355. 

*  The  very  valuable  Chronicon  Venetum  of  John  the  Deacon  is  published 
in  M .  G.  H. ,  SS.  vol.  7  :  his  other  work,  Chron.  de  singulis  patriarchis  Grad- 
ensis  ecclesice,  in  M.  G.  H.  Scr.  rer.  Langob.  et  Ital.,  pp.  393-397.  A  Chronicon 
Gradense,  commonly  attributed  to  John  the  Deacon,  but  so  thoroughly  un- 
historical  that  I  do  not  believe  it  is  his  work,  is  in  M.  G.  H.,  SS.  vol.  7.  All 
the  workB  attributed  to  the  Deacon  have  been  published  in  a  handy  shape 
by  Monticolo  in  Fonti  per  la  Storia  d'ltalia,  Cronache  Venez.  antichissime, 
vol.  1.  When  I  cite  any  of  the  works  I  give  reference  to  the  volume  edited 
by  Monticolo. 

3  Horatio  F.  Brown,  Venice,  An  Historical  Sketch,  1893,  p.  5. 


392  DOGES  OF  THE  VENETIANS       [chap.  xxti. 

whom  Cassiodorus  the  secretary  of  Theodoric  the  Ostrogoth 
about  523  a.d.  addressed  his  well  known  epistle.1  From 
about  550-560  we  get  our  first  explicit  information  about 
the  islanders  from  John  the  Deacon.  He  tells  us  that  in  or 
about  557,  and  therefore  at  a  time  when  a  district  of  Italy 
including  Padua,  Bologna,  and  Ancona  was  ruled  by  a 
Byzantine  exarch  at  Ravenna,  and  when  the  Lombards 
had  already  occupied  Pannonia  on  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Save,  only  a  hundred  miles  from  the  lagoon  and  the  islands, 
the  inhabitants  of  some  of  the  islands  voluntarily  joined 
together  in  a  body  politic  and  set  over  them  a  common 
government,  namely  a  council  consisting  of  all  the  tribunes 
whom  the  inhabitants  of  each  island  in  each  year  chose  to 
be  their  governors.2 

By  the  year  700  twelve  islands  or  other  settlements  were 
joined  in  the  Venetian  confederation.  Grado,  near  Aquilegia 
Doges  of  the  an(^  tymg  a^  the  north  east  end  of  the  lagoons, 
Venetian        was  the  seat  of  their  archbishop,  who  after  the 

confederacy  .  .  . 

from  about  Byzantine  fashion  was  called  patriarch.  Her- 
700  a.d.  aclea,  between  the  rivers  Piave  and  Livenza,  was 
seemingly  the  most  important  of  the  settlements.3  About 
the  year  700  the  people  of  the  Venetian  confederation  were 
dissatisfied  with  the  government  of  their  council  of  tribunes : 
they  met  in  an  assembly,  with  their  patriarch  and  bishops, 
and  chose  a  doge  to  be  their  ruler  and  above  their  tribunes 
for  the  term  of  his  life.*     For  forty  nine  years  there  were 

1  Cassiodorus,  Variarum,  12.  24. 

*  For  date  Johannes  Diac.  ed.  Monticolo,  p.  94.  1.  13,  p.  90.  1.  19.  For 
the  Lombards  in  Pannonia,  ibid.,  p.  60.  For  the  council  of  the  tribunes, 
ibid.,  p.  91.  1.  1,  2. 

3  Joh.  Diac.  ed.  Monticolo,  pp.  62-66,  and  map  in  H.  F.  Brown,  Hist. 
Sketch,  p.  3.  From  a  far  more  carefully  drawn  map  in  Baedeker,  Northern 
Italy,  end,  I  gather  that  the  lagoons  in  truth  extend  from  Chioggia  in  the 
south  to  a  point  eastward  of  Grado,  and  that  Heraclea  was  not,  as 
Horatio  Brown  marks  it,  situate  on  the  mainland  but  in  an  island  of 
the  lagoon. 

*  Joh.  Diac,  p.  91. 


chap,  xxil]  CITY  OF  VENICE  393 

doges  residing  at  Heraclea  j  then  for  five  years  (about  740- 
745)  there  was  no  doge,  but  a  succession  of  magistri  militum: 
from  about  745  till  811  there  were  doges  residing  at  the 
island  of  Malamocco  now  usually  known  as  the  Lido.1 
About  the  years  831-834  and  in  980  tribuni  are  men- 
tioned in  John  the  Deacon : 2  in  some  modern  writer  I 
have  read  that  from  some  date  which  I  cannot  recall  till 
about  the  year  1000  there  were  always  two  tribuni  serving 
under  the  doge. 

In  810  Pippin,  son  of  Charlemagne,  king  of  Italy  under 
his  father,  made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  conquer  the 
Venetians.     His  attack  taught  them  that  their   Riaito,  now 
government  had  in  Malamocco  only  an  insecure   Ve»lce»  the 

°  ■*  seat  of  the 

abode,  and  consequently  they  moved  it  to  the   Venetian 
islands  of  Rivus  Altus,  the  Deep  Channel,  in  the  fr^ g"™en 
middle   of  the   lagoon,   which   were   afterwards   a.d. 
known  as  Riaito,  and  are  now  the  city  of  Venice.    From  this 
time  forward  the  population  and  its  wealth  was  more  and 
more  concentrated  at  ,the  seat  of  government,  and  by  the 
year  1000  the  Venetian  body  politic  was  becoming  a  purely 
urban  community.5 

The  doges  from  the  time  when  their  office  was  created 
were  the  only  powerful  officers  of  the  confederacy :   always 
they  were  decidedly  more  powerful    than   the 
tribunes.    They  were  elected  officers  chosen  for   power  0f  the 
the  term  of  their  lives :   but  many  of  them  tried   d°ges,  8n- 

.  "72. 

to  secure  the  appointment  of  their  sons  as  their 
successors.     Their  attempts  provoked  rebellions.     In  five 

1  For  the  residence  of  the  doges  at  Malamocco  see  Joh.  Diac. ,  pp.  97-106. 
In  regard  to  dates  between  700  and  810  I  makes  guesses  from  the  state- 
ments of  John  the  Deacon,  though  I  know  that  the  slightly  different  dates 
given  by  the  doge  and  chronicler  Andrea  Dandolo,  who  ruled  and  wrote 
about  1350  a.d. ,  are  preferred  by  most  modern  critics.  It  is  impossible  to 
follow  the  Deacon  precisely,  because  between  707  and  810  he  mentions  about 
138  years,  that  is  to  say  about  35  more  years  than  actually  elapsed. 

2  Joh.  Diac,  pp.  Ill,  143.  3  Joh.  Diac,  pp.  100-106. 


394  DEPENDENCIES  [chap.  xxii. 

centuries  from  700  to  1192  there  were  forty  doges.  Only 
eighteen  remained  doges  till  their  deaths:  seven  resigned, seven 
were  deposed,  and  eight  were  put  to  death.1  Yet  till  1172  the 
Venetians  failed  to  establish  any  authority  capable  of  putting 
a  steady  restraint  on  the  ambitions  and  caprices  of  their  doges. 
It  seems  to  be  nearly  certain  that  between  998  and  1172 
new  enterprises  undertaken  by  the  Venetians  and  new 
Transmarine  experiences  that  resulted  from  their  enterprises 
dependencies  compelled  their  successive  generations  within 
Venetians,  that  period  to  recognise  the  necessity  of  keeping 
9981130.  the  activity  of  their  doges  within  bounds.  From 
998  they  began  to  acquire  transmarine  dependencies,  from 
1081  they  became  active  in  foreign  policy,  and  in  the  winter 
of  1171-72  their  fleet  was  crippled  in  active  service  far  away. 
In  998  their  prudent  and  powerful  doge  Pietro  Orseolo  the 
Second  set  out  with  a  naval  force  to  rescue  some  inhabitants 
of  Istria  and  Dalmatia  from  grievous  molestations  inflicted 
on  them  by  their  piratical  neighbours  the  Narentani  Slavi 
who  lived  on  the  mainland  opposite  to  the  isle  of  Lissa. 
When  his  work  was  done  he  took  the  peoples  whom  he  had 
delivered  under  the  protection  of  the  Venetian  Republic, 
took  the  title  of  doge  of  Venice  and  Dalmatia,  and  trans- 
mitted it  to  his  successors.2  Between  1081  and  1085  the 
Venetians  fought  effectively  on  behalf  of  the  Byzantine 
emperor  Alexius  Comnenus  against  Robert  Guiscard  the 
Norman  Duke  of  Apulia :  in  return  for  their  services  they 
received  from  Alexius  a  Golden  Bull,  which  enabled  them 
to  trade  free  from  import  dues  in  all  ports  of  his  empire, 
and  gave  them  a  quarter  to  inhabit  in  Constantinople,  in 
Durazzo,  and  in  some  of  his  other  towns  that  could  be  ap- 
proached from  the  sea.8     Between  1100  and  1130  the  service 

1  Hopf  in  Raumer's  Historisches  Taschtnbuch  for  1865,  p.  24. 

2  Horatio  Brown,  Venice,  Hist.  Sketch,  pp.  67,  68. 

3  Romanin,  Storia  di  Venezia  documentata,  1.  312-328. 


chap,  xxn.]  OF  VENICE  395 

which  the  Venetians  rendered  to  the  Crusaders  in  conveying 
them  across  the  sea  to  Syria  was  rewarded  by  the  cession  to 
them  of  ground  for  permanent  settlements  in  Tyre  and  in 
other  ports  in  its  neighbourhood. 

In  1171  Manuel  Comnenus,  who  had  in  1155  conquered 
Apulia  and  Calabria  from  a  grandson  of  Robert  Guiscard, 
and  who  still  cherished  designs  of  conquests  in 

,.         ,      ,  •  ill-       Destruction 

Itaty,  repudiated  the  concessions  made  by  his   0f  a  great 
ancestor  Alexius   to   the   Venetians.1    He   im-   Venetian 

•  t       naval 

prisoned  their  merchants  and  seized  their  goods,   armament 

The  doge  Vitale  Michele  sailed  in  command  of  a  by  Plasue> 
°  1171-2. 

great  Venetian  fleet  to  oppose  the  Byzantines, 
but  he  foolishly  missed  an  opportunity  of  fighting  a  decisive 
battle,  and,  taking  shelter  during  the  winter  in  the  ports  of 
Chios,  Lesbos,  and  Lemnos,  lost  nearly  all  his  sailors  and 
their  commanders  through  an  epidemic  sickness.  In  the 
spring  of  1172  he  came  home  and  was  murdered  in  a  rising 
of  the  population.  Thereupon,  during  an  interregnum,  the 
Venetians  began  to  make  far  reaching  changes  in  their 
system  of  government. 

In  the  period  from  998  till  1172  in  which  the  Venetians 
were  improving  their  fleets,  taking  part  in  important  wars, 
and  winning  transmarine  trading  stations,  there 
had  been  established  among  them  many  noble   change  in  the 
families  of  rich  merchants  quite  distinct  from   Sjflf 
the  older  noblesse,  whose  families  dated  from   government, 
before  998  and  had  in  that  early  period  furnished 
doges  and    tribunes    to    the   republic.     The   old   noblesse 
were  inclined  to  bear  themselves  as  members  of  princely 
families,  and  when   one  of   them  became   doge  his  rule 
was  arbitrary.     In  1172  the  members  of  the  new  mercantile 
families    wished    to    diminish    the    influence    of    the   old 
princely  families  and  to  set  bounds  to  the  power  of  the 

1  Gibbon,  ch.  56,  vol.  6,  214-216  in  Prof.  Bury's  edition. 


396  THE  GEEAT  COUNCIL  [chap.  xxii. 

doges.1  Many  members  of  the  new  families  had  learned  in 
distant  regions  how  to  deal  with  difficult  questions  affecting 
the  interests  of  their  communities  in  foreign  shores,  and  they 
thought  that  they  were  better  qualified  than  any  doge  to 
manage  the  affairs  of  the  Venetian  commonwealth.  They 
were  quite  right  in  their  opinion:  and  so  it  came  about 
that  they  and  their  successors  between  1172  and  1300 
transferred  the  supreme  power  in  their  republic  from  the 
doges,  who  were  elective  monarchs,  to  three  councils  com- 
posed of  nobles  highly  skilled  in  the  transaction  of  public 
business.  They  desired  to  attain  three  objects:  first  that 
the  actions  of  the  doge  should  be  restrained  by  a  powerful 
council,  and  that  the  council  should  elect  the  doges: 
second  that,  if  a  doge  or  any  other  man  was  guilty  of  any 
usurpation,  there  should  be  a  court  ready  to  punish  him : 
and  thirdly  that  foreign  affairs  should  be  wisely  and 
secretly  debated  in  a  competent  senate. 

During  the  interregnum  of  1172  the  Venetians  reached 

only  the  first  of  their  requirements.     Before  1172  there  was 

already  a  council  in  existence,  whose  members 

1 193  of  the       were  called  Pregadi,  or  men  invited  by  the  doge 

new  mercan-   ^0  „jve  njm  advice,  in  case  he  asked  them  to 

tile  nobles.  °  .  .    . 

meet  and  desired  their  opinion:  but  no  doge 
ever  summoned  them  if  their  advice  was  likely  to  go 
against  his  own  wishes,  and  therefore  they  were  unable  to 
put  any  restraint  on  his  actions.  In  1172  the  chief  men  of 
the  new  families  met  together  and  resolved  that  each  of  the 
six  wards  of  the  city  should  elect  two  men,  and  that  each 
of  the  twelve  men  thus  elected  should  nominate  forty 
members  of  a  Great  Council,  and  at  the  end  of  every  year 
the  Council  should  appoint  electors  of  a  new  Council.2    As 

1  Horatio  F.  Brown,  Studies  in  the  History  of  Venice,  vol.  1,  p.  48  and 
foil,  in  the  essay  on  Bajamonte  Tiepolo. 

2  Romanin,  Stor.  doc,  2.  90. 


chap,  xxil]  THE  GREAT  COUNCIL  397 

the  Venetians  were  disgusted  at  the  recent  folly  of  their 
doge  Vitale  Michele  they  accepted  the  proposal  of  the  new 
families,  and  a  Great  Council  of  four  hundred  and  eighty 
members  was  established.  At  the  same  time  it  was  arranged, 
though  not  without  much  public  dissension,  that  for  the 
election  of  a  new  doge  the  Great  Council  should  choose 
from  its  own  numbers  eleven  men  empowered  to  nominate 
a  candidate  for  election  to  the  office  of  doge  for  the  approval 
of  the  assembled  citizens.  The  townsmen  at  large  did  not 
like  losing  the  power  of  choosing  a  doge  freely:  but  they 
acquiesced  in  the  proposal  of  the  new  families,  and  soon 
afterwards  it  was  a  recognised  rule  that  the  man  nominated 
by  men  chosen  by  the  Great  Council  should  be  doge  of  the 
republic.1  The  Council  was  amply  endowed  with  powers: 
it  elected  not  only  the  doge,  but  also  all  other  officers  of  the 
commonwealth,  among  whom  were  the  six  councillors  who 
advised  the  doge,  and  it  prepared  all  laws  and  all  resolutions 
for  submission  to  a  vote  of  the  assembled  citizens.2 
Subsequently  between  1178  and  1193  when  Orio  Mastro- 
perio  was  doge  the  new  families  attained  the  second  of 
their  desires  and  established  a  strong  court  of  criminal 
judicature.3  The  new  court  was  the  Quarantia:  its  forty 
members  being  officers  of  the  commonwealth  were  elected 
by  the  Great  Council,  and  they  were  not  only  the  supreme 
judges  in  all  criminal  cases  of  importance,  but  they  also 
were  a  court  of  appeal  in  civil  suits,  and  they  gave  audience 
to  ambassadors  from  foreign  sovereigns.4  After  the  death 
of  Orio  Mastroperio  in  1193  all  the  doges  till  the  extinction 
of  the  Venetian  Republic  in  1797  were,  with  one  exception, 
merely  servants  of  the  mercantile  nobles,  though  they 
were  surrounded  with  pomp  and  ceremony  exceeding  any 

1  Roman  in,  Stor.  doc.  di  Veil.,  2.  89-93. 

2  Ibid. ,  2.  90  end,  and  91  first  two  lines. 

3  Ibid.,  2.  137.  4  Ibid.,  2.  137. 


398  MORE  DEPENDENCIES  [chap.  xxii. 

that  had  been  assumed  by  the  arbitrary  doges  of  earlier 
times. 

The  one  doge  after  1193  who  rose  to  importance  was 
Enrico  Dandolo,  the  immediate  successor  of  Orio  Mastro- 
Fresh  perio.     He  found   an   opportunity  of  rising  to 

dependencies   eminence    by    accepting    military    and    naval 

coined  by  the 

Venetians,  command  in  a  most  difficult  enterprise.  Ever 
1204.  since  1172  the  Venetians  had  been  longing  to 

take  revenge  on  a  Byzantine  emperor  for  the  wrongs  and 
the  sufferings  inflicted  on  them  by  Manuel  Comnenus.  In 
1202  they  succeeded  in  persuading  a  large  force  of  Crusaders 
to  join  with  them  in  an  attack  on  Constantinople,  in  which 
their  ships  were  commanded  by  the  venerable  Enrico 
Dandolo.  In  July  1203  they  with  their  allies  took  the 
city  a  first  time:  it  revolted,  and  in  April  1204  they 
captured  it  again.  Before  Constantinople  was  taken  for 
the  second  time  the  Venetians  and  the  Crusaders,  thinking 
to  become  masters  of  the  whole  Eastern  Empire,  agreed  on 
a  division  of  their  expected  conquests.1  To  an  emperor 
who  was  yet  to  be  elected  were  assigned  two  palaces  in  the 
capital,  a  quarter  of  the  territory  of  the  empire,  and  the 
prerogative  rights  of  the  Caesars:  all  the  rest  was  to  be 
divided  in  two  equal  shares,  one  for  the  Venetians,  the  other 
for  the  Crusaders.  From  this  agreement,  which  could  not 
be  executed,  the  Venetians  took  the  pretentious  title,  Lords 
of  a  quarter  and  a  half  of  the  Roman  Empire.2  When  the 
invaders  in  1204  reckoned  up  the  conquests  of  which  they 
were  able  to  take  effective  possession,  the  Venetians  received 
as  their  share  three  of  the  eight  wards  in  Constantinople, 
Modon  at  the  south  west  corner  of  the  Peloponnesus, 
Adrianople  and  an  adjacent  strip  of  territory,  and  all  the 

1  For  the  place  of  the  agreement  in  the  Beries  of  events  see  Gibbon,  ch.  61, 
note  1,  addition  by  Professor  Bury. 

2  Gibbon,  ch.  61,  note  9. 


chap,  xxii.]  OF  VENICE  399 

islands  of  the  yEgean  Sea  except  those  near  to  the  Hellespont 
or  to  Asia  Minor.     They  soon  saw  that  Adrianople  and  its 
district  was  useless  to  them :  and  they  were  glad  to  give  it 
up  to  Boniface  of  Montferrat  whose  share  was  the  kingdom 
of  Thessalonica,  and  to  receive  in  return  the  island  of  Crete, 
which  was  already  commonly  called  Candia.     Their  most 
precious  acquisition  was  their  three  wards  in   Stamboul : 
Modon  was  a  convenient  port  of  call  for  their  ships  on  their 
way  to  the  Bosporus,  and  Crete  was  a  halfway  house  for 
voyagers  going   to   Tyre   or   Alexandria.     The    Venetian 
Republic  established  a  settlement  at  Modon  and  took  the 
place  into  its  own  possession,  no  doubt  sending  thither  a 
podesta  or  a  bail  as  to  Constantinople:1  to  the  town  of 
Candia  also  they  sent  a  colony  but  could  not  keep  their 
settlers  under  efficient  control : 2  all  the  islands  except  Crete 
they  gave  away   as    benefices    to    distinguished   Venetian 
families.3    As  to  the  relations  of  the  Venetian  sovereigns 
of  islands  to  the  Venetian  Republic  I  have  found  no  direct 
evidence,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  indication  that  they 
ever  failed  in  obedience  to  the  Great  Council.     If  they  had 
quarrelled  with  the  government  of  their  mother  city  they 
would  have  lost  the  protection  of  its  fleets  and  would  soon 
have  ceased  to  draw  any  revenue  from  their  islands.     It 
seems  likely  that  they  may  have  resided  at  Venice  and  sent 
bailiffs  or  governors  to  manage  their  islands.     If  my  con- 
jecture is  correct  they  lived  at  Venice  like  any  of  the  other 
commercial  nobles,  and  simply  derived  an  increase  of  income 
from  their  distant  possessions. 

The  man,  to  whom  the  Venetians  and  the  Crusaders  gave 

1  Gibbon,  ch.  61,  vol.  6,  p.  416  in  Bury's  edition. 

2  /&»<*.,  ch.  61,  n.  12. 

3  See  the  admirably  complete  list  of  the  islands  and  of  their  possessors 
which  was  published  by  Professor  C.  Hopf  in  the  Sitzungsberichte  of  the 
Vienna  Academy,  1856,  vol.  21,  p.  221  and  foil.,  and  is  copied  into  Gibbon, 
Bury's  edition,  vol.  6,  app.  18,  pp.  558-560. 


400  THE  CLOSING  [chap.  xxii. 

the  title  of  emperor  and  a  fourth  part  of  the  Greek 
emperor's  dominions,  was  Baldwin,  Count  of  Flanders,  the 
Undim-  ^rs^  °^  s*x  Latin  emperors  of  Constantinople, 

inished  In  1261  his  kinsman  and  successor  Baldwin  de 

Venetians,  Courtenay  was  dethroned  and  supplanted  by 
1204-1328.  kne  Greek  Michael  Palaeologus,  who  had  recently 
by  usurpation  acquired  the  empire  of  north  western  Asia 
Minor,  including  Smyrna,  and  Magnesia,  and  the  capital 
city  Nicaea  near  the  Propontis.1  The  substitution  of  a  Greek 
for  a  Latin  emperor  at  Stamboul  did  little  hurt  to  the 
Venetians :  for  Michael  Palaeologus  permitted  the  Pisans, 
the  Venetians,  and  the  Genoese  to  retain  their  factories  in 
his  capital,  accepted  their  oaths  of  allegiance,  encouraged 
their  industry,  confirmed  their  privileges,  and  allowed  them 
to  live  under  the  jurisdiction  of  magistrates  appointed  by 
the  governments  of  their  mother  cities.  If  the  Venetians 
suifered  any  loss  at  all  it  was  only  because  the  new  emperor 
bestowed  on  the  Genoese,  who  had  agreed  with  him  before 
he  gained  Constantinople  that  if  he  needed  their  aid  they 
would  help  him,  exclusive  possession  of  Galata,  which  is  only 
separated  from  Constantinople  by  the  strait,  two  furlongs 
broad,  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbour  of  the  Golden  Horn.2 
The  Venetians  felt  the  vicinity  of  their  rivals  in  Galata 
inconvenient:  but  at  some  time  in  the  reign  (1282-1328)  of 
Andronicus  the  Elder,  son  of  Michael  Palseologus,  they  were 
so  strong  that  one  of  their  fleets  could  frighten  the  Genoese 
out  of  Galata,  and  then  could  land  detachments  of  men  who 
burnt  their  empty  habitations.3 

About  1282,  the  time  when  Michael  Palaeologus  died,  the 
new  commercial  families  at  Venice,  who  already  possessed 
nearly  all  the  seats  in  the  Great  Council,  were  seized  by 
a  fear,  which  seems  to  have  been  groundless,  lest  their 

1  Gibbon,  ch.  61  in  Bury's  edition,  vol.  6,  pp.  434-440. 

2  Ibid.,  ch.  62,  vol.  6,  p.  466  in  Bury'8  edition.  3  Ibid.,  vol.  6,  p.  509. 


chap,  xxil]  THE  GREAT  COUNCIL  401 

sanctuary  the  Great  Council  should  be  in  some  way  invaded 

by  their  opponents,  the  members  of  the  old  princely  families. 

They  desired  to  get  a  law  passed  which  should 

make  it  almost  impossible  for  any  man,  unless   of  the  Great 

he  were  descended  in  a  male  line  from  some   Council> 

1298. 
man   who  had  been   a   councillor   since    1172, 

to  obtain  a  place   in   the  Great   Council.     In   1286,   they 

proposed  their  law  but  could  not  get  it  accepted :  in  1298 

they  gained  their  end.     The  measure  which  they  carried  is 

commonly  called  the  Closing  (serrata)  of  the  Great  Council : 

it  had  the  effect  of  turning  the  new  commercial  nobles  into 

a  ruling  caste  of  conciliar  families  not  less  exclusive  and 

retentive  of  power  than  the  curule  families  had  been  in 

ancient  Rome  in  the  century  that  followed  the  defeat  of 

Hannibal.1     It  does  not,  however,  appear  that  the  members  of 

the  commercial  families  were  bad  or  mischievous  managers  of 

public  business.     The  Great  Council,  which  they  completely 

controlled,  appointed   men   in   every    year  to    select    the 

members  of  the  smaller  councils,  but,  being  now  a  numerous 

body,  did  not  perform  the  work  of  administration.     That 

was  left  to  the  smaller   councils:   the  members  of  those 

smaller  councils  were  carefully  selected,  and  there  is  nothing 

to  indicate  that  their  rule  bore  hardly  on  any  class  except 

possibly  such  members  of  the  princely  families  as  showed 

any  indignation  at  their  unfair  exclusion  from  influence  in 

the  life  of  the  commonwealth.2 


1  Till  recently,  when  I  found  and  read  the  essay  by  Horatio  Brown  on 
Bajamonte  Tiepolo,  I  never  understood  what  was  done  at  the  Closing  of  the 
Great  Council.  The  essay  is  the  second  in  Brown,  Studies  in  Venetian 
History,  vol.  1. 

2  My  impressions  of  Venetian  institutions  and  their  merits  are  derived 
from  the  masterly  treatise  by  Hopf,  which  is  to  be  found  in  Raumer's 
Historisches  Taschenbuch  for  1865.  In  that  treatise  masses  of  evidence  which 
confute  the  erroneous  statements  of  Daru  were  for  the  first  time  collected 
and  published.  Even  now  the  work  of  Hopf  is  without  a  rival  among  the 
many  commentaries  on  Venetian  government  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

2c 


402  COUNCIL  OF  TEN  [chap.  xxii. 

In  1309  Bajamonte  Tiepolo,  grandson  of  a  former  doge, 

conspired  with  other  members  of  the  old  noblesse  to  over- 

power  the  Great  Council  by  armed  force  and  to 

of  Ten:  soon  get  the   councillors  into   his   power:    and  it  is 

er  1310.  possible  that  his  project  might  have  succeeded 
if  his  fellow-conspirator  Badoer  had  not  been  prevented  by  a 
storm  from  crossing  the  lagoon  at  the  appointed  time  with 
his  contingent  of  insurgents.1  The  conciliar  families  were 
alarmed,  and  certain  precautions  which  they  took  for  their 
future  safety  gave  the  Venetian  government  from  thence- 
forth its  peculiar  character  of  mysterious  secrecy.  The 
Quarantia  was  too  large  a  body  for  the  prompt  detection 
and  punishment  of  treasonable  projects.  The  conciliar 
nobles  selected  ten  men  to  form  a  nucleus  of  a  new  court 
of  criminal  justice :  these  ten,  sitting  with  the  doge  and  the 
six  councillors  assigned  to  him  by  the  Great  Council,  were 
known  as  the  Council  of  Ten.  This  new  council  was  a 
committee  of  public  safety,  and,  as  such,  before  long  obtained 
the  power  of  secretly  inflicting  punishments  without  limit 
and  without  regard  to  any  law :  it  followed  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  it  was  able  to  dominate  all  other  organs  in  the 
government,  and  to  usurp  authority  over  their  functions. 
The  conduct  of  foreign  affairs  was  said  to  be  the  work  of 
the  Pregadi,  and  till  the  fall  of  the  Republic  the  Pregadi 
gave  instructions  to  ambassadors  going  to  foreign  courts, 
and  received  their  official  reports :  but  it  sometimes 
happened  that  the  Council  of  Ten  secretly  gave  the 
ambassadors  quite  different  instructions,  and  received  from 
them  independent  and  confidential  reports,  which  alone  had 
influence  in  determining  the  policy  of  the  Republic.2  In 
1355  the  Ten  tried  the  Doge  Marino  Falieri  for  treason, 

1  Horatio  Brown,  Essay  on  Bajamonte  Tiepolo,  the  second  of  his  Studies 
in  Venetian  History,  and  Hist.  Sketch,  pp.  168-176.  The  fullest  narrative  of 
the  conspiracy  is  this  last  in  the  Hist.  Sketch. 

2  Horatio  Brown,  Hist.  Sketch,  p.  182. 


chap,  xxii.]  DECLINE  OF  VENICE  403 

found  him  guilty,  and  ordered  him  to  be  executed  at  a  few 
hours'  notice.1  Occasionally  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
certainly  once  in  the  year  1539  as  we  learn  from  records, 
the  Ten  became  even  more  terrible  by  delegating  all  their 
boundless  powers  to  Three  Inquisitors  of  State.  We  do 
not  know  much  about  the  Three  Inquisitors,  nor  of  the 
occasions  when  they  were  called  into  existence,  because  the 
Ten  usually  kept  no  written  records  of  their  proceedings : 
but  competent  critics  think  it  likely  that  they  may  have 
been  employed  sometimes  even  so  early  as  the  fifteenth 
century.2 

Soon  after  the  conspiracy  of  Bajamonte  Tiepolo  had  been 
suppressed,  the  Venetians  began  acquiring  territory  on  the 
mainland  near  their  lagoons.    Between  1339  and 
1406   they    annexed    the    district    of   Treviso:   acquired  by 
before  1492  they  possessed  Padua  and  Verona :   Venice  in 
and  soon  after  1492  Friuli,  Brescia,  and  Bergamo 
were  added  to  their  territory.3    The  conciliar  nobles  kept 
their  subjects  on   the  mainland  equally  devoid  with  the 
common  folk  on   their  islands  of  political  privilege,  and 
carefully  abstained  from  employing  them  as  soldiers.     When 
they  needed  a  military  force  they  hired  a  mercenary  army 
under  some  condottiere :  the  most  famous  of  the  adventurers 
in  their  service  was  Bartolommeo  Colleoni,  whose  admirable 
equestrian  statue,  modelled  by  Andrea  Verrochio,  adorns  the 
open  space  at  the  west  end  of  the  church  of  S.  Zanipolo.4 

The  communities  that  lived  in  Venice  from  the  beginning 
of  the  sixteenth  century  were  less  important  among  the 
powers  of  Europe  than  their  predecessors  of  the  The  decline 
fourteenth   and  fifteenth   century.      For   three   ofVemce- 
reasons  they  were  less  important.     Firstly,  the  Turks  about 

1  Horatio  Brown,  Hist.  Sketch,  p.  205.  2  Ibid.  p.  401  :  Hopf,  p.  87. 

3  See  Spruner-Menke,  Atlas  (1880),  maps  25,  27. 

4  The  full  name  of  the  church  is  Santi  Giovanni  e  Paolo  :  but  it  is  never 
pronounced. 


404  ORIGINS  OF  THREE  CITIES        [chap.  xxii. 

the  year  1500  gained  an  ascendancy  in  the  Levant.  Secondly, 
the  discoveries  of  America  and  India  caused  long  voyages  on 
the  ocean  to  be  more  attractive  to  mariners  than  short 
voyages  in  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  thus  transferred  the 
leadership  in  maritime  enterprise  from  the  Venetians  to 
those  peoples  further  to  the  north  west  of  Europe  who  had 
the  best  access  to  those  seas  which  must  be  crossed  before 
distant  continents  could  be  visited.  Thirdly,  in  1530,  the 
Austrian  dynasty  of  Habsburg  gained  a  dominant  position 
in  northern  Italy,  and  thus  shut  in  the  Venetians  on  the 
west  as  well  as  on  the  north  and  on  the  east.  In  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  power  of  the 
Venetians  visibly  declined,  and  in  1797  Napoleon  Buona- 
parte took  their  city  without  striking  a  blow,  and  handed 
over  both  their  city  and  their  territory  on  the  mainland  to 
the  Habsburg  sovereign  of  Austria-Hungary. 

At  the  end  of  this  chapter  I  shall  according  to  my  usual 
practice  append  a  tabular  statement  of  the  communities 
Genoa  and  which  successively  inhabited  the  two  cities  Genoa 
Venice  not  and  Venice,  which  have  been  described  in  the 
their  chapter,  and  of  their  governments.     But  before 

histories.  doing  this  I  wish  to  say  that  the  histories  of 
Genoa  and  of  Venice  do  not  seem  to  me  to  resemble  one 
another  very  closely.  The  history  of  the  Venetians  is  much 
more  like  the  history  of  the  ancient  Romans,  than  like  the 
history  of  the  Genoese,  and  in  its  earliest  stages  it  also  finds 
a  counterpart  in  the  earliest  stages  of  the  history  of  ancient 
Sparta. 

The  earliest  inhabitants  of  the  city  of  Venice,  as  of  Rome 
and  of  Sparta,  consisted  of  more  tribes  than  one  voluntarily 
joined  together  under  one  government  and  settled  together 
in  a  single  city.  Sparta  was  founded  by  two  tribes  ruled 
respectively  by  the  Agidse  and  by  the  Eurypontidse,  Rome 
by  the  Tities,  the  Ramnes,  and  the  Luceres,  Venice  by 


chap,  xxil]  COMPARED  405 

twelve  tribes  settled  on  the  islands  of  the  Venetian  lagoon. 
The  descendants  of  the  first  founders  of  Sparta  and  of 
Rome  were  extremely  proud  and  exclusive  similarity  of 
bodies  of  burgesses,  at  Sparta  the  Spartiatae,  the  origins 
at  Rome  the  Patres :  from  among  the  descend-  Sparta  and 
ants  of  the  founders  of  Venice  was  formed  an  Rome- 
extremely  proud  and  exclusive  body  of  commercial  nobles. 
The  Roman  Patres  were  singularly  prudent  in  their  policy 
both  at  home  and  abroad :  so  probably  were  the  Spartiatae 
until  they  were  seduced  into  the  folly  of  enslaving  the 
Messenians,  since  up  to  that  time  and  afterwards  they 
were  readily  obeyed  by  their  Perioeki  in  Lacedaemonia :  so 
certainly  were  the  Venetian  commercial  nobles.  Similarity 
of  character  and  conduct  in  the  later  generations  of  three 
peoples  following  on  a  similar  mode  of  junction  of  the 
earliest  generation  in  each  people  cannot  be  thought  to 
come  from  mere  chance  or  coincidence,  but  must  almost 
certainly  be  the  effect  of  like  causes  acting  in  the  three 
peoples.  It  is  rash  to  guess  what  causes  may  have  been 
acting  in  peoples  whose  history  is  unknown;  but  some 
similar  causes  must  have  been  acting  in  the  three  peoples, 
and  they  may  have  been  these.  Exclusiveness  in  an  urban 
community,  compounded  of  more  tribes  than  one,  would 
naturally  arise  through  jealousy  among  the  tribes.  Thus 
in  Rome  the  Tities  would  not  be  allowed  to  adopt  new 
members  of  their  tribe  at  pleasure,  because  the  Ramnes  and 
the  Luceres  would  fear  lest  they  might  be  outnumbered : 
thus  through  jealousy  no  new  member  could  be  admitted 
to  the  close  corporation  of  the  Roman  Patres  unless  his 
admission  was  sanctioned  by  the  Tities  and  by  the  Ramnes 
and  by  the  Luceres.  Abundance  of  men  skilled  in  govern- 
ment would  arise  from  like  reasons.  In  ancient  Rome  the 
original  senate  consisted  of  a  hundred  Tities,  a  hundred 
Ramnes,  and  a  hundred  Luceres :  all  the  senators  from  each 


406  COMMENTS  ON  [chap.  xxii. 

tribe  would  wish  to  attend  all  the  meetings  of  the  senate  in 
order  that  the  interests  of  their  tribe  might  not  be  over- 
looked. Hence  it  would  follow  that  senators  would  nearly 
all  hear  all  the  debates  of  the  senate  and  would  gain 
acquaintance  with  the  course  of  public  business.  In  like 
manner  in  the  Venetian  confederacy  before  700,  when  the 
government  was  vested  in  a  council  of  twelve  tribunes, 
it  would  be  impossible  for  Heraclea  or  Malamocco  to 
admit  new  citizens  because  the  tribunes  of  the  other 
islands  would  fear  that  the  island  which  acquired  new 
citizens  would  also  acquire  preponderance  in  wealth  and 
population. 

The  singular  ability  of  the  commercial  nobles  at  Venice 
in  conducting  public  business  cannot  be  attributed  to  the 
same  cause  which  originally  taught  the  Roman 
tfceUter  °  Patres  to  be  prudent  rulers,  because  the  class 
experience  of  commercial  nobles  did  not  arise  durinsr  the 
Venetians  federal  period  of  the  Venetians.  Yet  there  were 
and  the  Kfa  causes  for  the  acquisition  of  prudence  in 

Romans.  x  .  L 

government  by  the  commercial  nobles  of  Venice 
and  for  the  practice  of  prudence  in  government  by  those 
later  Roman  Patres  who  were  only  descended  from  the 
Patres  of  the  federal  period  of  the  Romans,  and  who  lived 
in  a  time  when  the  distinctions  among  the  Tities  and  the 
Ramnes  and  the  Luceres  had  long  been  forgotten.  Some 
centuries  after  the  federal  period  of  Rome  the  Romans 
expanded  into  districts  won  from  the  Etruscans  of  Veii, 
from  the  Capuans,  from  the  Sabines.  Some  centuries  after 
the  federal  period  of  Venice  the  Venetians  expanded  into 
settlements  far  away  beyond  the  seas.  From  the  necessity 
of  defending  their  outlying  settlements  both  the  nobles 
of  Rome  and  the  nobles  of  Venice  learned  to  set  a  right 
value  on  prudence  in  government  and  on  prudence  in 
foreign  policy. 


chap.  xxii. J        CITIES  WITH  DEPENDENCIES  407 

Although  the  three  peoples  that  lived  in  Venice,  in  Rome, 
and  in  Sparta  (since  each  of  them  owed  its  origin  to  a 
voluntary  junction   of  tribes  and  each  of  them 
formed  itself  into  a  city  state)  were  alike  in  the   on  cities 
earlier  parts  of  their  careers,  it  is  manifest  that  witk  depend- 

cncics. 

they  were  not  alike  in  their  histories  from 
beginning  to  end.  Their  earliest  generations  were  alike, 
because  like  origin  gives  like  character ;  and  their  generations 
continued  to  be  alike  till  something  occurred  which  pre- 
vented the  transmission  of  inherited  character  to  a  further 
generation.  As  soon  as  we  come  in  the  history  of  one  of  the 
peoples  to  a  generation  which  acquired  dependencies,  that 
generation  assumes  a  character  that  was  not  present  in  its 
fathers  or  forefathers:  and  since  dependencies  can  be 
acquired  in  an  infinite  number  of  ways,  there  is  no  reason 
why  any  two  communities  which  acquire  dependencies 
should  be  alike,  or  why  their  descendants  should  be  alike. 
If  reference  is  made  to  my  tables  of  pedigrees  of  urban 
communities,1  it  will  be  seen  that  both  in  ancient  history 
and  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  pedigrees  of  those  peoples  which 
never  acquired  a  dependency  are  arranged  in  groups  of 
similar  pedigrees,  but  every  pedigree  of  a  conquering  urban 
people  has  to  stand  in  isolation. 

1  See  pages  279-281,  384-5,  408-9. 


408 


TABULAE 


[chap.  XXII. 


BODIES  POLITIC  IN  MARITIME  MEDIEVAL  CITIES 
WITH  DEPENDENCIES 


Bodies  Politic. 

(1)  In  Genoa,  a  city  with 
adjacent  dependent  territory 
in  mountainous  country,  and 
with  settlements  beyond  sea. 

(a)  From  1100  to  1256. 

Composite  bodies  politic  held  in 
concord  by  dread  of  enemies 
on  the  land. 


(b)  From  1256  to  1380. 
Composite   bodies    politic   free 

from  fear  of  attack  and  riven 

with  discords. 


(2)  On  the  Venetian  lagoon. 
(a)  From  557  or  567  to  about 

700. 
Confederation  of  twelve  islands. 


(6)  From  about  700  to  810. 
A  closer  confederation. 


Governments. 


Till  1190  consuls. 

From  1217  to  1256,  a  Podesta, 
eight  Rectores,  Plenum  con- 
cilium of  48  elected  councillors, 
occasionally  a  general  assembly 
(Parlamento). 

From  1270  to  1339,  Captains  of 
the  People,  sometimes  one, 
sometimes  two. 

From  1339  Doges,  elected  for 
life  but  often  deposed. 


Many  governments : 

For  each  island,  a  tribune  elected 

annually. 
For  the  whole,  a  council  of  the 

tribunes. 

A  Doge,  first  at  Heraclea,  then 
at  Malamocco. 


CHAP.    XXII.] 


VIEW 


409 


BODIES    POLITIC    IN    MARITIME    MEDIAEVAL    CITIES   WITH 

dependencies. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 
(c)  From  810  to  998. 
A      confederation     gravitating 

towards  its  centre,  the  city 

of  Venice. 


Governments. 

A  Doge  at  Venice.  Frequent 
attempts  of  Doges  to  found 
dynasties. 


(d)  From  998  to  1172. 

Almost  purely  urban  com- 
munities, with  foreign  de- 
pendencies, and  important 
foreign  alliances. 


(«)  From  1172  to  1310. 
Purely  urban  communities,  with 

extremely  important  foreign 

dependencies. 


A  Doge  at  Venice. 


A  council  consisting  of  members 
of  the  new  commercial  noble 
families. 


(/)  From  1310  to  1797. 

Purely  urban  communities  intent    The  Council  of  Ten,  appointed 
on  maritime  commerce.  by   selectors    chosen   by    the 

commercial  nobles. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

UNIONS  OF  PEOPLES:  STRONG  KINGLY  GOVERNMENTS 

We  now  turn  back  to  peoples  derived  from  compulsory 
junctions  of  tribes  or  of  fiefs.  In  the  early  part  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  four  largest 
groups  of  such  peoples,  living  in  England,  Castile, 
Sweden  and  France,  had  formed  only  composite  bodies 
politic,  and  were  suffering  disasters  through  the  weakness 
of  their  central  governments,  and  the  insubordination  of 
local  groups  of  men  led  by  nobles  or  princes.  Among  the 
lesser  peoples  those  in  Germany  were  already  fairly  well 
united,  because  all  their  local  districts  were  within  short 
distances  from  their  centres  and  could  be  kept  under  con- 
trol: the  other  two  of  the  lesser  peoples  formed  through 
compulsory  unions  of  communities,  the  Danes  and  the 
Savoyards,  have  not  as  yet  come  under  our  notice.  In 
the  present  chapter  we  shall  observe  that  before  1814,  the 
larger  masses  of  men  descended  from  junctions  of  tribes  or 
of  fiefs  strengthened  their  central  governments,  and  all  of 
them  but  one  produced  united  bodies  politic.  We  shall 
moreover  see  that  in  the  same  period  ended  in  1814 
the  lesser  peoples  also  set  up  strong  kingly  or  princely 
governments,  and  that  in  most  cases  they  took  this  step 
because  they  needed  authoritative  leaders  to  protect  them 
against  aggressive  action  on  the  part  of  their  more  powerful 
neighbours. 

410 


chap,  xxiil]  STRENGTHENING  OF  GOVERNMENTS      411 

The  history  of  the  strengthening  of  central  governments 
in   European   peoples   or    groups   of    peoples,   and   of    the 
progress  made  by   the   larger  masses  of    men   perj0dSbe- 
towards  unity  can  be  divided  into  three  periods :   tween  the 

',.,„..  r  fifteenth 

(1)  to  1530.  century  and 

(2)  1530-1589.  l8l4- 

(3)  1589-1814. 

Till  1530  the  strengthening  of  the  central  governments 
was  brought  about  in   England  and   Castile  in   the   first 
instance  by  the   exhaustion  of  the  forces  that  ^  Till  IS30 
tended  towards  strife,  and  by  the  desire  of  the   Causes  of 
peoples  to  be  protected  from  civil  dissensions  in   g0vern- 
the  future:    in  France   and  in  Sweden  it  was   ments- 
needed  in  order  to  enable  the  peoples  of  the  countries  to 
recover   their  independence.      After   1481   fresh  additions 
were  made  to  the  strength  of  the  central  governments  in 
Spain  and  in  France,  because  the  kings  of  the  countries 
with   the  approval   of   their    subjects   undertook   difficult 
external  wars,  and  needed  great  authority  at  home  in  order 
to  conduct  them  successfully. 

In  France  between  1415  and  1420  the  greater  part  of  the 
demesne  was  conquered  from  its  ruler,  the  mad  king  Charles 
the  Sixth,  by  Henry  the  Fifth  of  England  with  •,,  Tiu  IS30 
the  connivance  or  the  open  aid  of  two  dukes  of  France. 
Burgundy.  After  the  deaths  in  1422  of  Henry  and  Charles, 
the  fiefholders  in  France  other  than  the  Duke  of  Burgundy 
acted  as  independent  allies  of  the  new  king  of  France, 
Charles  the  Seventh,  for  the  expulsion  of  the  English :  and 
as  they  fought  better  against  the  foreign  intruders  than  the 
lazy  French  king,  though  not  so  well  as  the  heroine  Joan  of 
Arc,  there  was  no  reason  to  imagine  that  the  French  would 
be  aided  towards  the  recovery  of  their  independence  if  the 
fiefs  were  brought  under  a  common  government  with  that 
part  of  the  demesne  which  remained  to  Charles  the  Seventh. 


412  FEANCE  [chap,  xxiii. 

But  after  Joan  of  Arc  had  been  captured  in  1430  by  the 
enemy  all  the  central  districts  of  France  were  horribly 
pillaged  and  tormented  either  by  the  English  or  by  small 
armies  of  French  soldiers  led  by  private  adventurers  who 
had  no  money  to  pay  their  men.  Hence  Charles  the 
Seventh  in  1439,  after  holding  a  states  general  at  Orleans, 
issued  a  decree  in  which  he  firstly  forbade  any  Frenchman 
to  be  a  captain  unless  he  held  the  king's  commission,  and 
secondly  deprived  the  fiefholders  of  the  power  to  levy  any 
tax  from  their  subjects  which  could  impede  the  king  in 
collecting  the  taille,  a  direct  tax  whence  most  of  the  royal 
revenue  was  derived.  The  edict  gave  the  king  a  standing 
army,  and  an  income  to  pay  it.  Louis  the  Eleventh,  son  of 
Charles  the  Seventh,  feeling  strong  in  the  possession  of  the 
army,  threatened  Bretagne,  which  was  not  in  France,  and 
which  had  except  on  rare  occasions  been  exempt  from 
binding  homage  to  the  French  kings.  The  French  fief- 
holders, except  the  Due  de  Bourbon,  upheld  Bretagne. 
Louis  was  defeated  and  humiliated  in  1465  by  the  fief- 
holders, who  included  among  them  the  Duke  of  Burgundy, 
sovereign  of  the  Netherlands ;  but  before  his  death  in  1483 
he  had  overcome  them,  had  brought  their  fiefs  into  the 
demesne,  and  ruled  all  France  except  Bourbonnois  and  one 
or  two  lesser  fiefs  in  its  neighbourhood  with  unlimited  power. 
The  dispossessed  fiefholders  had  not  usually  been  hard 
masters :  Louis  taxed  all  his  subjects  with  reckless  cruelty. 
Hence,  when  Louis  was  dead,  discontent  became  apparent, 
and  the  tyranny  was  relaxed.  But  Charles  the  Eighth, 
Louis  the  Twelfth  and  Francis  the  First  tempted  the 
fighting  men  in  France  with  expeditions  into  Italy  where 
plunder  was  likely  to  be  abundant,  and  Francis  after  1515, 
when  he  won  the  battle  of  Marignano,  was  as  absolute  a 
ruler  as  Louis  the  Eleventh  had  been.  But  the  inhabitants 
of  the  fiefs  had  suffered  their  annexation  to  the  demesne  by 


chap,  xxiil]  ENGLAND,  SPAIN  413 

Louis  the  Eleventh  against  their  will,  and  their  sons  had 
no  reason  to  feel  any  liking  for  his  successor  Francis  the 
First. 

The  English  from  1455  to  1461,  and  again  in  1471,  felt 
that  their  chances  of  prosperity  were  being  damaged  by  the 
wars  of  the  Two  Roses  waged  by  a  few  nobles  and  ,-  Tm  IS 
soldiers  for  their  own  profit,  and  for  no  object  in  England, 
which  the  large  masses  of  the  people  took  any  interest.  Hence 
in  1485,  when  the  men  of  war  had  killed  one  another  off, 
such  a  remnant  of  a  parliament  as  could  then  be  got  together 
was  glad  to  recognise  Henry  the  Seventh  as  king,  though  he 
had  no  title  by  birth  to  the  kingly  office,  and  to  allow  him 
to  govern  almost  without  parliamentary  control.  Henry 
the  Eighth  derived  a  perfectly  sound  hereditary  title  from 
his  mother  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Edward  the  Fourth,  and 
was  therefore  able  to  govern  more  autocratically  than  his 
father :  but  even  he,  when  he  attempted  to  levy  taxes  with- 
out leave  of  parliament  was  reminded  of  his  error  in  1525  by 
a  small  rebellion  in  Suffolk,1  and  thenceforth  almost  always 
thought  it  prudent  to  get  his  decrees  sanctioned  by  a 
subservient  assembly  of  estates. 

In  Castile  a  war  was  waged,  as  we  have  already  observed, 
between  1469  and  1474,  to  settle  who  should  succeed  the 
reigning  king.2  The  combatants  were  on  one  ,^  Till  IS,0 
side  a  group  of  nobles  who  for  their  own  ends  Spain, 
supported  a  claimant  generally  believed  not  to  be  of  royal 
birth :  the  "other  side  fought  for  Isabella,  who  in  all 
probability  was  the  rightful  heiress,  and  for  her  husband 
Ferdinand,  king  of  the  Aragons 3  in  his  own  right.  Isabella 
and  Ferdinand  were  victorious :  wife  and  husband  acted  in 
concert,  and  Ferdinand  employed  the  forces  both  of  Castile 

1  Hall's  Chronicle,  reprint  of  1809,  p.  699. 

2  See  p.  339. 

3  Ferdinand's  kingdoms  were  Aragon,  Catalonia  and  Valencia.     Catalonia 
was  the  strongest  of  the  three. 


414  SWEDEN  [chap,  xxiii 

and  of  the  Aragons  in  the  conquests  of  Granada  and  of 
Naples:  in  order  to  make  these  conquests  possible  the 
Spaniards  acquiesced  in  an  increase  of  kingly  power.  After 
Isabella  and  Ferdinand  were  dead  the  royal  authority  in 
their  kingdoms  of  Castile,  the  Aragons,  Sicily  and  Naples 
passed  to  their  grandson  Charles  of  Habsburg,  who  was  also 
heir  to  the  Netherlands  and  Austria.  When  Charles  in 
1519  came  into  all  his  inheritances  he  had  a  larger  revenue 
than  any  other  king  in  Europe,  and  was  in  command  of  a 
small  standing  army  created  by  Cardinal  Ximenes.  Soon 
after  1519  he  resolved  to  use  his  kingdom  of  Naples  as  a 
military  basis  for  the  conquest  of  the  rich  towns  in 
Lombardy  and  Tuscany.  The  prospect  of  plunder  in  Italy 
was  attractive  to  a  great  number  of  the  Spanish  nobles :  and 
when  Charles  in  1521  and  1522  quarrelled  with  the  Cortes 
both  in  Castile  and  in  the  three  communities  which 
composed  the  kingdom  of  the  Aragons,  the  nobles,  after 
joining  for  a  time  with  the  towns  in  resistance  to  the  king, 
changed  sides.  Charles  was  then  enabled  to  suppress 
nearly  all  the  privileges  of  the  Cortes,  and  to  govern  his 
Spanish  kingdom  without  being  subject  to  any  regular 
control. 

In  Sweden  between  1397  and  1530  the  rulers  were  till 
1435  foreign  princes:  after  that  time  native  Swedes  bore 
(i)  Till  1530.  authority  with  the  title  of  regent  or  king  or 
Sweden.  administrator.  In  1520  Christian  the  Second, 
king  of  Denmark,  overpowered  Sten  Sture  the  younger,  a 
native  administrator  of  Sweden,  and  treated  the  Swedes  with 
such  cruelty  that  he  was  called  the  Nero  of  the  North. 
Gustavus  Ericson,  a  young  Swedish  nobleman,  afterwards 
usually  known  as  Gustavus  Vasa,  called  his  countrymen  to 
arms  in  the  province  of  Dalarne  or  Dalecarlia,  expelled 
Christian  of  Denmark,  and  on  being  elected  King  of  Sweden 
in  1523  was  invested  with  very  ample   powers,  because  a 


chap,  xxiil]     NEW  INTELLECTUAL  FORCES  415 

strong  king  was  needed  to  protect  the  country  from  foreign 
foes  and  from  internal  commotion.1 

During  the  hundred  years  between  1430  and  1530,  in 
which  the  peoples  in  France,  England,  Spain  and  Sweden 
learned  by  experience  that  they  needed  strong 
kingly  governments,  new  forces  of  an  intellectual   New 
nature  were  arising  to  influence  men's  minds  and  inteUectuai 

.  forces. 

characters.  Scholars  at  first  in  Italy  and  then 
elsewhere  made  a  diligent  study  of  those  ancient  Greek  and 
Latin  authors  whose  works  had  been  neglected  for  centuries, 
and  geographical  discoveries  gave  new  ideas  of  what  lands 
were  in  the  world  and  what  could  be  done  in  them :  and 
lastly  men  began  to  see  that  some  of  the  actions  of  Popes 
and  their  officers  were  not  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of 
conduct  which  the  clergy  enjoined  on  other  men,  and  to 
inquire  into  the  foundations  of  the  Papal  authority.  In 
consequence  of  their  inquiries  there  arose  first  new  religious 
congregations,  and  then  new  churches  which  denied  the 
Papal  supremacy,  and  in  every  body  politic  men  had  to 
consider  the  question  whether  the  members  of  the  new 
churches  should  be  persecuted  or  deemed  worthy  of  favour 
and  active  support.  From  the  difficulty  of  settling  this 
question,  and  from  the  different  solutions  of  it  arrived  at 
in  different  countries,  arose  conditions  which  profoundly  in- 
fluenced the  character  of  bodies  politic  throughout  the  world. 

We  shall  consider  the  effects  produced  by  the  new  doctrines 
in  many  lands :  but  first  in  the  countries  inhabited  by  peoples 
descended  from  unions  of  tribes,  namely  the  German 
principalities,  Sweden,  Spain  and  England. 

In  the  German  principalities,  in  Sweden  and  in  Spain  the 
rulers  and  their  subjects  were  in  accord.     In  Germany  some 

1  Geijer,  History  of  the  Swedes,  well  translated  into  English  by 
J.  H.  Turner,  chapters  8-10.  For  a  short  narrative  of  the  events  see  Dyer, 
Modern  Europe,  2.  506-515. 


416        GERMAN  PRINCIPALITIES,  SWEDEN  [chap,  xxiii. 

princes  with  their  subjects  were  for  the  new  doctrines, 
some  for  the  old.  Wars  arose  between  the  principalities 
(2)  i«o-i«o  wni°n  adopted  the  new  opinions  and  those  which 
German  rejected   them :    each   prince   and   his   subjects 

Sweden,  1CS'  fought  side  by  side,  and  the  subjects  in  many 
Spain.  principalities  for  the  sake  of  victory  abandoned 

their  privilege  of  meeting  in  Landtage,  and  allowed  their 
princes  to  rule  without  control.  In  Sweden  the  laity  cared 
little  for  theology,  and  let  their  King  Gustavus  settle  for  them 
that  they  should  become  members  of  one  of  the  new  churches. 
In  Spain  men  remembered  that  their  forefathers  since  the 
eighth  century  had  won  nearly  all  their  glories  in  crusades 
undertaken  against  the  Moors  on  behalf  of  the  Papal 
Catholic  doctrines  :  they  would  not  be  degenerate,  but  were 
glad  to  give  perfectly  absolute  power  to  their  king  Philip 
the  Second,  who  shared  their  views,  so  that  he  might  be 
unhindered  in  his  work  of  exterminating  the  Pope's  enemies 
with  tortures  and  executions.  Thus  in  the  German  princi- 
palities and  in  Spain  the  rise  of  the  new  doctrines  directly 
strengthened  monarchical  authority:  in  Sweden  it  found 
the  king's  power  strong  and  it  left  it  unimpaired. 

In  Sweden  the  work  of  unifying  all  local  parts  of  the  realm, 
which  was  done  before  1589,  held  good*  in  perpetuity.     After 

the  death  of  Gustavus  in  1560,  rivalries  ensued 
Unification  till  1598  among  three  of  his  sons  and  one  of  his 
of  the  grandsons.     If  during  the  thirty  eight  years  of 

rivalries  among  princes  there  had  been  also 
rivalries  among  provinces  they  must  have  led  to  wars 
between  provinces.  No  such  wars  arose  then  or  afterwards. 
Hence  it  is  clear  that  from  1560  or  at  any  rate  from  1598 
the  Swedes  were  a  permanently  united  people  in  the  sense 
that  no  local  part  was  willing  to  separate  from  the  rest :  in 
the  present  chapter  I  shall  have  no  occasion  to  speak  of 
them  again. 


chap,  xxiii.]  ENGLAND  417 

In  England  Henry  the  Eighth  was  prevented  from  getting 
a  divorce  and  a  chance  of  male  issue  because  the  Pope 
retained  jurisdiction  over  suits  relating  to  /2*  l530-i589. 
marriages :  and  in  1534  with  the  approval  of  England, 
a  parliament  he  transferred  all  the  power  that  the  Pope  had 
in  England  into  his  own  hands.  As  he  had  no  quarrel  with 
the  Papal  theology  he  retained  it  unaltered.  But  in  1536 
he  dissolved  part  of  the  monasteries  because  the  monks 
persisted  in  regarding  the  Pope  and  not  the  king  as  their 
master.  He  was  met  by  the  rebellion  known  as  the 
Pilgrimage  of  Grace  and  the  formation  of  a  small  but 
zealous  party  of  adherents  of  the  Pope :  in  his  last  years 
and  in  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Sixth  an  equally  zealous 
party  was  formed  by  the  opponents  of  the  Catholic  doctrines, 
who  were  now  known  as  Protestants  or  as  the  Reformed. 
The  mass  of  the  people  were  indifferent  about  doctrines  and 
merely  desired  a  kingly  government  strong  enough  to  choose 
a  scheme  of  doctrines  for  them,  and  to  prevent  the  zealots  on 
the  two  sides  from  making  a  civil  war.  Under  Edward  the 
Sixth  the  English  generally  called  themselves  Protestants : 
under  Mary  they  conformed  to  Papal  ritual  but  hated 
Mary's  persecutions :  under-  Elizabeth,  who  herself  cared 
little  about  theology  but  was  determined  that  England 
should  be  kept  free  from  foreign  interference,  they  were 
content,  and  made  the  queen  even  stronger  than  her  father 
Henry  had  been  in  order  that  she  might  restrain  the 
fanatics  of  both  parties.  Thus  in  England  the  rise  of  the 
new  doctrines  led  indirectly  to  a  great  increase  of  monarchic 
authority.  From  1558  to  1586  the  queen  and  the  mass 
of  the  people  were  exposed  to  great  perils,  because  they 
asserted  that  England  was  independent  of  the  Pope.  They 
had  against  them  always  Mary  Stuart,  and  either  a  king  of 
France  or  the  king  of  Spain,  and  it  was  seen  in  1569  that 
the  northern  counties  desired  to  detach  themselves  from 

2d 


418  TUDOE  [chap,  xxiii. 

the  rest  of  the  country  in  order  to  be  under  a  Catholic 
sovereign.  But,  when  Mary  Stuart  had  been  executed  and 
the  Armada  sailed  for  the  conquest  of  England,  even  the 
zealous  adherents  of  Catholic  doctrines  were  ready  to  fight 
for  their  countrymen  and  not  for  their  creed.  Thus  it  was 
seen  in  1588  that  no  part  of  the  English  people  would 
consent  to  separate  itself  from  the  rest  and  live  under  a 
government  of  its  own :  in  other  words  all  Englishmen  then 
living  had  formed  themselves  into  a  united  body  politic,  or, 
what  is  the  same  thing,  a  single  political  community. 
They  transmitted  to  their  descendants  a  determination  to 
live  under  one  common  government,  and  from  1588  the 
English  were  one  people. 

The  strong  monarchic  power  of  the  Tudors  was  not  the 
cause  of  unity  in  England :  it  was  itself  only  brought  into 
strong  existence  in  1485  because  the  great  mass  of  the 

monarchy  in  people  was  already  united  and  desired  that  all 
the  cause  of  should  be  united.  In  1455,  when  the  War  of  the 
unity  but  a      Two  Roses  broke  out,  no  one  desired  strife  except 

symptom  of 

approximate  some  of  the  great  nobles  and  a  quantity  of  soldiers 
qnity#  who  had  served  under  them  in  France  but  were 

now  out  of  employ.  The  proof  that  the  sole  source  of 
disunion  lay  in  the  soldiers  and  their  captains  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that,  when  the  fighting  men  had  destroyed  one  another, 
Henry  the  Seventh  and  his  successors  never  needed  a 
standing  army.  All  Englishmen  were  grateful  to  the  king 
for  protecting  them  against  a  resurrection  of  turbulent 
nobles,  and  their  gratitude  ensured  his  safety.  After  the 
irregular  execution  of  Buckingham  in  1521  Henry  the  Eighth 
could  trust  all  his  subjects  not  to  turn  against  him:  his 
successors  could  trust  all  but  those  few  who  were  inflamed 
by  religious  zeal.  The  reciprocal  trust  between  sovereign 
and  subjects  produced  important  results.  In  place  of  the 
old  disorderly  barons  arose  new  classes  of  nobles  and  gentry 


chap,  xxiii.]  DYNASTY  419 

devoted  to  the  kings  and  fit  to  be  employed  by  them  in 
public  duties.  Henry  the  Eighth  set  the  squires  to  manage 
the  local  business  of  country  districts  as  Justices  of  the 
Peace : x  Mary  appointed  nobles  to  be  Lords  Lieutenant 
of  shires  and  to  lead  their  armed  forces :  under  Elizabeth 
local  business  was  wholesomely  managed  by  nobles  and 
gentlemen  who  lived  on  their  estates  and  knew  the  country 
folk  around  them.  The  gentlemen  of  the  country  side  were 
devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  queen  and  the  country,  but 
produced  such  men  as  Peter  and  Paul  Wentworth  who 
between  1575  and  1588  dared  to  remonstrate  in  parliament 
against  the  queen's  interference  with  freedom  of  debate.2 
When  the  Armada  threatened  England,  Elizabeth  had  no 
fighting  men  except  untrained  farmers  and  peasants,  and  no 
commanders  except  the  Lords  Lieutenant  of  the  shires. 

From  the  peoples  derived   from   compulsory   unions  of 
tribes  we  turn  to  the  peoples  or  rather  groups  of  peoples  in 
France  and  in  the  Netherlands,  both  of  them 
descended  either  wholly  or  in  part  from  com-   France  and 
pulsory  unions  of  fiefs,  which  fiefs  had  them-  the  Netner- 

r  .  lands. 

selves  been  peopled  mainly  by  men  whose 
ancestors  had  been  subjects  of  the  Roman  Caesars  and  had 
been  governed  under  the  rigid  Roman  system  of  administra- 
tion. As  the  inhabitants  of  France  and  of  the  Netherlands 
were  rather  groups  of  peoples  than  anything  approaching  to 
the  character  of  single  peoples,  the  effect  of  the  strife  about 
doctrines  and  the  government  of  churches  was  more  violent 
in  them  than  in  the  comparatively  united  peoples  derived 
from  unions  of  tribes.  We  take  the  Netherlanders  first 
because  the  conflict  of  the  old  doctrines  and  the  new 
produced  its  full  effect  sooner  among  them  than  among 
the  French. 

1  Gneist,  Hist.  Eng.  Const.,  2.  135. 

2  Hallam,  Const.  Hist.,  1.  191,  251,  255-261, 


420  THE  NETHEELANDS  [chap,  xxiii. 

In  the  Netherlands  there  were  as  we  have  seen  a  southern 

group  of  peoples  and  a  northern  group.1    The  earliest  known 

_     ancestors  of  the  southerners  had  been  till  the 

(2)   IS3OIS89. 

The  Nether-  fifth  century  subjects  of  the  Roman  Caesars : 
lan  sto  i577-  those  of  later  generations  from  the  ninth  century 
to  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  had  been  ruled  by  a  number  of 
independent  fiefholders.  The  northerners  were  descended 
from  unions  of  tribes,  subsequently  ruled  from  the  eleventh 
century  to  the  fifteenth  by  counts  of  Holland  and  of 
Gelderland.  In  the  Netherlands  generally,  and  especially 
in  the  southern  Netherlands,  the  towns  were  more  important 
than  the  country,  and  each  of  the  great  commercial  towns 
was  quite  capable  on  occasion  of  adopting  a  policy  of  its 
own.  Charles  of  Habsburg  who  ruled  the  Netherlands 
from  1519  to  1555  disliked  the  new  doctrines,  and  in 
the  thirty  six  years  of  his  reign  put  to  death  many 
thousands  of  his  Netherland  subjects  solely  on  account  of 
their  belief  in  them : 2  his  son  Philip  set  up  such  a  furious 
persecution  of  the  heretics  as  has  no  parallel  in  European 
history.  In  1572  the  northern  Netherlanders  (the  Dutch) 
took  William  the  Silent,  who  since  1559  had  been  called 
Stadholder  or  Viceroy  for  Philip  of  the  Dutch  provinces 
of  Holland  and  Zealand,  as  their  leader  and  commander 
and  began  a  war  against  Philip:  in  1576  the  northerners 
and  the  southerners  joined  together  in  a  Pacification  at 
Ghent  for  the  purpose  of  getting  rid  of  Philip's  armies  from 
all  the  Netherlands,  and  they  were  so  successful  that  in 
1577  those  of  the  king's  troops  who  were  actually  Spaniards 
went  away  home.3 

But  the  communities  in  the  Netherlands,  since  some  were 

1  See  p.  350. 

2  Dyer,  Modern  Europe,  2.  223,  n.  7.  The  passage  from  Ranke  Hist,  of  the 
Popes  there  referred  to  gives  the  chief  contemporary  evidence.  In  Bohn's 
edition  of  Ranke  Hist,  of  the  Popes  the  passage  is  quoted  in  1.  405  n. 

3  Motley,  Dutch  Republic,  Part  v.  ch.  1.  end. 


chap,  xxiii.]  FKANCE  421 

urban,   some    rural,   some   mainly   or    entirely   Protestant, 
some  mainly  or  entirely  Catholic,  could  not  form  a  single 
body   politic.      From    1579   for  some  years   to   Northern 
come  they  grouped  themselves  in  combinations   Netherlands 

•   i       •!•  i  i  i  t-»         i        -t  ^>/n«      i  and  southern 

which  did  not  last  long.  But  by  1609  they  Netherlands, 
were  permanently  arranged  in  two  political  I577-i°25- 
organisations.  The  southerners,  having  satisfied  themselves 
that  the  Spaniards  were  not  strong  enough  to  do  them  much 
hurt,  consented  to  remain  as  dependents  of  the  Spanish 
king :  the  Dutchmen  of  Holland,  Zealand,  and  Utrecht  in 
1579  at  the  Union  of  Utrecht  formed  themselves  into  a 
league  or  confederation,  which  before  1625  was  joined  by 
all  the  seven  Dutch  provinces.  The  union  of  the  seven 
provinces,  which  by  1625  was  certainly  more  than  a  league 
and  must  be  called  a  confederation,  will  receive  a  further 
brief  notice  in  my  chapter  on  voluntary  unions  of  equal 
communities. 

In  France  the  many  peoples  living  side  by  side  had  never 
come  near  to  being  all  united,  and  since  the  thirteenth 
century  had  had  no  kings  except  Charles  the  (2)  1530-1589. 
Fifth  (1364-1380)  and  Louis  the  Twelfth  (1498-  France- 
1515)  whose  memories  they  could  regard  with  affection. 
Hence,  when  the  new  doctrines  came  among  them,  nearly 
all  Frenchmen  became  violent  partisans  either  of  the  new 
doctrines  or  of  the  old,  and  there  was  no  large  party,  as 
there  was  in  England,  that  stood  simply  for  the  king  and 
for  peace.  Between  1562  and  1589  eight  furious  wars  were 
waged  by  Frenchmen  against  Frenchmen :  in  1572  many 
thousands  of  the  Huguenots,  adherents  of  the  new  doctrines, 
were  ruthlessly  massacred  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  by  the 
Catholics  led  by  Henri  de  Guise:  in  1588  Guise  was 
murdered  in  the  king's  palace  at  Blois  by  order  of  the 
king  Henry  the  Third:  in  1589  the  king  was  himself 
stabbed  to  death  by  a  young  Dominican  monk,  bent  on 


422  BALANCE  [chap,  xxiii. 

taking  vengeance  for  the  murder  of  Guise.  At  the  end 
of  the  year  1589  Henry  the  Fourth  was  indeed  recognised 
by  the  Huguenots,  in  whose  faith  he  had  been  brought  up, 
as  their  king,  but  he  had  no  chance  of  bringing  all  the 
French  under  his  government  except  by  continuing  the 
civil  war  until  he  could  induce  the  Catholics  to  accept 
him  as  their  ruler. 

In  order  that  we  may  form  an  idea  of  the  unifications 

that   had   been    effected   by    1589    in    the   larger   peoples 

,    descended  from  unions  of  tribes  or  of  fiefs,  it 

Summary  of 

unifications  is  worth  while  to  take  a  view  of  those  peoples 
to1589'  as    they   then    stood.      The   English   and   the 

Swedes  were  permanently  unified  peoples.  In  the  Nether- 
lands two  groups  of  peoples  had  been  formed,  each  of 
which  was  certain  in  future  generations  to  become  more 
united.  The  Spaniards  for  the  time  being  acted  together 
enthusiastically  under  their  despotic  king  in  the  work 
of  extirpating  the  heretics  at  home  and  in  fighting  against 
them  abroad:  but  there  were  plenty  of  disagreements 
and  dislikes  on  matters  not  connected  with  theology 
between  the  Castilians  and  the  Aragonese.  The  French 
alone  remained  violently  and,  as  it  seemed,  hopelessly 
disunited. 

Not  only  had  progress  towards  unity  been  made  in  the 
larger  countries  except  France,  but  the  governments  in 
pr  fth  some  °f  those  countries  had  adopted  new  aims 
Balance  of  of  policy  towards  the  preservation  of  their  inde- 
pendence. The  governments  of  France  and  of 
England  saw  that  the  king  of  Spain  was  stronger  than 
either  of  them,  and  each  of  them  knew  that  if  he  were 
allowed  to  crush  either  of  them  the  other  would  be  crushed 
in  its  turn.  Hence,  if  either  of  them  chanced  to  be  in 
danger  from  Spain,  the  other,  for  motives  of  self-preserva- 
tion, agreed  to  give  it  help,  and  each  of  them  consciously 


chap,  xxiil]  OF  POWEK  423 

aimed  at  maintaining  a  Balance  of  Power  among  the 
European  governments.  It  is  highly  significant  of  the 
attention  paid  in  England  and  in  France  to  the  maintenance 
of  equilibrium,  that  in  both  countries  the  word  state  was 
used  before  1589  to  denote  a  body  politic  having  a  govern- 
ment of  its  own  and  rights  which  it  intended  to  vindicate 
and  in  whose  vindication  it  could  expect  the  aid  of  some 
external  power.1 

Since  in  the  present  chapter  I  am  concerned  only  with 
unifications  of  peoples  and  with  the  strong  kingly  govern- 
ments that  were  needed  during  the  period  of  the 
unifications,  I  have  nothing  further  to  say  in  it  The  peoples 
about  the  English,  the  Swedes,  and  the  southern   to  be 

°  111       considered. 

Netherlands :  all  these  peoples  had  been  already 
fairly  well  unified  before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
The  peoples  whose  fortunes  I  have  to  trace  from  1589  to 
1814  are  firstly  the  French,  secondly  the  Spaniards,  thirdly 
the  Prussians  and  a  number  of  other  peoples  that  were 
between  1589  and  1793  brought  by  compulsion  under 
their  government,  and  lastly  all  the  smaller  peoples  that 
derived  their  origin  long  ago  from  compulsory  junctions  of 
tribes  or  of  fiefs. 

In  France  during  the  long  wars  of  religion  from  1562 
to  1596  armies,  battalions  and  regiments  obeyed  their 
commanders,  and  the  commanders  obeyed  no  France, 
one.  Henry  the  Fourth  in  order  to  become  IS96-i624. 
king  of  all  the  French  found  it  necessary  to  purchase  the 
support  of  the  generals  on  both  sides :  and  in  1596,  when 
the  wars  ended,  the  men  who  had  been  commanders  were 
in  possession  of  money,  lands,  offices,  provincial  govern- 
ments, and  titles,  which  they  could  hand  on  to  their 
posterity.       Thus    was    founded     a    new    noblesse,    very 

1  Symonds  D'Ewes,  Reports,  pages  162,  193,  237  in  edition  of  1682,  1689  : 
Montaigne,  Essays,  Bk.  1,  Essay  54;  Bk.  3,  Essay  9. 


424  FRANCE  [chap,  xxiii. 

dangerous  to  the  central  government  in  a  country  whose 
inhabitants  were  not   one  people  but  many  peoples.     As 
long  as  Henry  lived  he  contrived  to  keep  the  nobles  and  all 
other  classes   under  his  control;   but  after  he   had  been 
murdered  in  1610  his  widow  and  his  son  were  for  fourteen 
years  almost  powerless.     The  French  kings  in  their  efforts 
to  govern  their  many  peoples  had  for  centuries  thought  it 
prudent  to  grant  privileges  and  favours  to  those  classes 
which  could  help  them  and  might  be  dangerous.     After  the 
death  of  Henry  the  Fourth  the  classes  that  enjoyed  privi- 
leges were  the  nobles,  the  prelates,  and  the  judges  in  the 
parlements  which  had  now  been   established  in   thirteen 
towns.     All  these  classes  were  exempt  from  direct  taxation : 
the  judges  bought  their  offices  from  judges  willing  to  sell, 
made  large  incomes  from  presents  made  to  them  by  suitors, 
which  they  honestly  put   in  a  pool  and  divided  without 
regard  to  the  votes  they  had  given  about  the  verdict,  and 
paid  about  a  sixth  part  of  their  takings  as  a  quit  rent  to  the 
king  for  the  enjoyment  of  their  places.1    Le  Parlement  de 
Paris  had  a  special  privilege:   no  new  law  was  reckoned 
valid  in   any  parlement  till  it   had   been   registered   in  le 
Parlement  de  Paris.     The  effete  and  useless  states  general 
held  one  meeting  four  years  after  the  death  of  Henry  the 
Fourth :  after  that  it  disappeared  unlamented  for  a  century 
and  three  quarters,  and  no  public  body  except  the  judges  in 
the  parlement  had  any  power  to  hinder  the  enactment  of 
any  law  by  the  king.     The  nobles,  the  prelates,  and  the 
judges  in   the  parlements   were  privileged   orders.     Such 
orders  grow  up  almost  of  necessity  when  a  single  govern- 
ment, indigenous  in  a  country,  tries  to  rule  many  peoples 
that  care  little  for  one  another,  and  have  no  affection  for  the 
government,  and  give   it  no  help.     The  government  must 

1  Gasquet,   Precis  des  Institutions  Francaises,    1.    268-282,    gives    some 
information  about  the  incomes  of  judges. 


chap,  xxiil]  PKIVILEGED  ORDERS  425 

grant  privileges  to  attract  to  itself  all  men  who  if  they  were 
active  in  their  own  localities  might  endanger  its  existence. 
If  the  privileged  orders  are  faithful  to  the  government,  as 
the  civil  servants  were  to  the  Caesars,  they  are  its  best  prop : 
if  they  try  to  domineer  over  it,  as  the  bureaucracy  has  done 
sometimes  in  Russia,  they  are  its  formidable  foes. 

In  1624  Richelieu  entered  the  council  of  Louis  the 
Thirteenth  and  soon  gained  a  dominant  influence  which 
enabled  him  to  direct  the  king's  policy.  The  Richeiieu 
obstacles  to  the  unification  and  welfare  of  the  and  Mazarin, 
French  were  firstly  at  home  a  rebellion  of 
Huguenots  in  the  west  and  the  power  of  the  new  nobles 
and  princes  in  their  provinces,  and  secondly  abroad 
the  ambitions  of  the  Habsburg  sovereigns  of  Spain 
and  Austria.  Richelieu  began  with  obviously  necessary 
measures:  he  overpowered  the  Huguenot  rebels  at  La 
Rochelle,  and  repeatedly  intervened  forcibly  in  the 
Valtelline  through  which  the  river  Adda  flows  down  from 
two  important  passes  over  the  Alps  to  the  lake  of  Como,  and 
in  the  neighbouring  duchy  of  Mantua,  because  he  desired  to 
prevent  the  Spanish  Habsburg  from  getting  a  route  by 
land  for  sending  forces  to  help  his  kinsman  in  Austria. 
After  this  was  done  the  remaining  foes  to  the  welfare  of  the 
French  were  the  nobles  and  princes  in  France,  and  the 
two  branches  of  the  Habsburgs,  now  unable  to  communicate 
with  one  another  by  land.  Considerations  derived  from  the 
subsequent  histories  of  France  and  of  Europe  lead  me  to 
think  that  the  nobles  and  the  princes  at  home  were  more 
dangerous  to  the  French  than  the  Habsburgs  abroad,  and 
that  Richelieu  would  have  done  the  best  thing  for  France, 
if  he  had  not  meddled  with  the  Habsburgs  in  arms  any- 
where except  in  the  Valtelline  and  in  Mantua,  but  had 
taken  the  lead  of  the  humbler  classes  of  Frenchmen,  and 
had  by  force  compelled  the  privileged  orders  to  pay  direct 


426  RICHELIEU  [chap,  xxiii. 

taxes  in  proportion  to  their  wealth :  if  this  had  been  done, 
it  seems  likely  that  the  French  would  have  quickly  become 
extremely  strong  as  a  united  people,  and  could  easily  have 
defended  themselves  against  the  Habsburgs.  Richelieu 
could  not  see  all  that  was  coming,  and  he  decided  to  fight 
the  Habsburgs  in  Germany.  He  made  the  French  gener- 
ally and  the  nobles  in  particular  believe  that  they  had  more 
to  gain  by  fighting  in  a  foreign  land  than  by  quarrelling  at 
home.  He  tempted  many  great  nobles  to  desert  their 
provisional  governments  and  live  about  the  king's  court. 
He  set  men  of  humble  origin  who  owed  everything  to  his 
favour  and  were  entirely  dependent  on  him  to  govern  a  few 
of  the  provinces  with  the  new  title  of  Intendans,  and  he 
deprived  le  Parlement  de  Paris  of  all  power  to  interfere  in 
matters  of  policy.  While  he  lived  he  kept  order :  but  the 
government  of  his  successor  Mazarin  was  rendered  impotent 
from  1648  to  1652  by  rebellions  incited  by  two  of  the  privi- 
leged orders :  the  judges  of  le  Parlement  de  Paris  aroused 
the  first  insurrection,  princes  and  nobles  made  the  second. 
The  rebellions  came  to  an  end  in  1652  because  the  two 
privileged  orders  could  not  agree  together,  and  Mazarin  was 
restored  to  power. 

In  1661,  on  the  death  of  Mazarin,  Louis  the  Fourteenth, 
twenty  two  years  of  age,  took  personal  control  of  the 
Louis  the  government )  in  the  next  thirty  years  he  carried 
Fourteenth,  ^q  plans  of  Richelieu  to  completion.  In  con- 
sequence of  the  military  successes  won  by  Richelieu  and  of 
the  advantageous  terms  obtained  by  Mazarin  at  the  treaties 
of  Westphalia  in  1648  and  of  the  Pyrenees  in  1659,  Louis 
was  already  in  1661  the  most  powerful  man  in  Europe  and 
was  furnished  with  pretexts  for  robbing  his  neighbours :  he 
used  his  opportunities  skilfully,  and  in  1678  after  the  treaty 
of  Nymwegen  no  state  in  Europe  except  France  was  sure  of 
its  independence.     But  in  spite  of  his  glories  he  was  afraid 


chap,  xxiil]  LOUIS  XIV.  427 

of  what  the  nobles  and  the  princes  might  do  if  they  lived 
in  the  provinces.  He  tempted  them  with  prospects  of 
splendours  and  pensions  to  desert  their  homes  in  the 
country  and  to  attend  on  him  as  courtiers.  Every  duke  or 
prince  who  was  assiduous  at  court  was  sure  to  get  an 
eleemosynary  income  from  the  king  to  supplement  the 
wealth  that  he  drew  from  his  estates.  The  emoluments 
granted  to  the  nobles  and  princes  were  sometimes  simply 
yearly  sums  of  money,  sometimes  they  were  titular 
governorships  of  towns  or  provinces :  but  the  governorships 
were  given  on  the  understanding  that  the  recipient  was  not 
to  go  near  to  the  place  of  which  he  was  nominal  governor,  and 
was  to  draw  from  it  nothing  but  an  income.  There  was  one 
instance,  possibly  more  than  one,  of  a  duke  who  actually 
ruled  a  province  because  one  of  his  ancestors  had  ruled  it 
well  with  great  advantage  to  one  of  the  former  kings  of 
France.  This  instance  occurred  in  Dauphine:  le  Due  de 
Lesdiguieres,  in  perfect  loyalty  to  Louis  the  Fourteenth, 
ruled  the  province  admirably  and  won  the  affection  of  the 
people  under  his  care.  By  so  doing  he  was  marked  for  the 
king's  displeasure :  when  he  died  in  1681,  Louis  forbade  the 
queen  to  pay  his  widow  such  a  visit  of  condolence  as  she 
had  hitherto  paid  to  all  duchesses  who  lost  their  husbands.1 
In  every  province  Louis  appointed  an  Intendant,  he 
excluded  le  parlement  entirely  from  political  influence,  and 
himself  controlled  every  department  of  the  government 
with  the  advice  of  his  council  of  four  ministers  and  two 
secretaries. 

Louis  spent  money  and  men's  lives  in  greater  profusion 
than  any  man  since  the  Cresars.  Men  were  used  up  in  his 
foreign  wars,  money  partly  in  wars,  partly  in  pensions  to 
princes  and  dukes:  the  men  were  furnished  by  the  poor 
peasantry,  the  money  partly  by  the  peasantry,  partly  by  the 

1  Saint-Simon,  Mem.,  ed.  Boislisle,  12.  6. 


428  MISERY  IN  FRANCE  [chap,  xxiil 

townsfolk.     The  wars  and  the  conquests  to  which  they  led 

taught  the  European  powers  that  they  must  form  alliances 

to  restore  a  Balance  of  Power.     In  1673,  1689 

condition  of     an(l  1 701  coalitions  were  formed  to  resist  Louis  : 

the  French,  the  coalition  of  1701,  begun  by  William  the 
1706-1789.  .  '       °  J 

Third  of    the  Netherlands    and   England,   and 

conducted  by  Marlborough  and  Eugene,  attained  its  object. 
In  1706  Louis  lost  the  command  of  the  southern  Nether- 
lands and  of  the  valley  of  the  Po,  the  two  most  important 
strategic  areas  in  western  Europe:  the  French  peasantry 
had  already  given  the  king  all  their  strong  men  to  die  in 
his  wars,  and  those  who  survived  were  too  near  starvation 
to  pay  more  taxes.  From  1706  for  eighty  years  each 
generation  of  Frenchmen  was  weaker  and  more  miserable 
than  the  one  before  it,  but  the  kings  of  France  after  Louis 
the  Fourteenth  still  engaged  in  needless  wars  and  still 
taxed  the  starving  poor  to  find  pensions  for  the  rich.  In 
1770  the  treasury  was  empty  and  the  king  repudiated  part 
of  his  debts.  At  length,  after  a  few  years  income  had  been 
wasted  between  1779  and  1782  in  helping  the  American 
colonies  of  England  to  become  independent,  it  became  clear 
to  every  one  that,  unless  the  privileged  orders  were  taxed, 
France  could  no  longer  maintain  a  government. 

Early  in  1789  the  king  summoned  a  meeting  of  the  states 
general,  and  in  so  doing  tacitly  declared  himself  an  ally  of 
hr  I  frill  in  nf  ^e  b°uroe°isie  and  the  peasantry,  who  owned 
the  king  only  about  a  third  part  of  the  land  in  France  but 
cause  of  the  Pa*^  ^e  wn°le  °f  tne  direct  taxes.  On  May  4 
oppressed       the  states  general  met:   on  June  20  the  king 

classes 

broke  his  alliance  with  the  bourgeoisie  and  the 
peasants  by  excluding  the  deputies  from  the  hall  in  which 
they  sat.  Thenceforth  the  king  and  the  privileged  orders 
were  in  alliance  against  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasantry 
and  the  states  general. 


chap,  xxtii.]         DISRUPTION  OF  FRANCE  429 

The  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasantry,  who  together  made 
up  the  mass  of  the  population,  had  hoped  that  the  king 
and   the  states  general  would   act   together  in 

The  states 

diminishing  the  monstrous  privileges  of  the  general  and 
orders  and  in  setting  up  a  strong  government,  theconstitu- 
When  the  king  refused  to  join  in  these  tasks 
the  states  general  attempted  to  perform  them  alone.  They 
succeeded  in  destroying  the  privileges  and  in  reducing  by 
confiscations  the  lands  held  by  the  extremely  rich  from  two 
thirds  to  one  third  of  the  whole  cultivated  area  in  France ; 
but  they  could  not  make  a  strong  government.  In  the 
autumn  of  1791  they  took  the  name  of  Constituent 
Assembly  and  formulated  a  constitution,  which  though 
not  very  important  in  French  history  must  be  noticed 
because  it  afterwards  served  as  a  model  or  an  ideal  for 
reformers  in  Spain  and  in  Italy.  Its  defects  were  these.  It 
began  with  the  famous  declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man, 
subversive  of  any  government:  it  forbade  the  executive 
ministers  to  sit  in  the  legislative  assembly :  and  it  provided 
no  second  chamber  of  legislature.  Further  than  this  the 
Constituent  Assembly  passed  a  self  denying  ordinance,  for- 
bidding its  own  members  to  seek  election  to  the  new  legis- 
lative body,  thus  depriving  that  body  of  the  services  of  the 
only  men  in  France  who  had  any  experience  in  public 
deliberation. 

The  constitution  of  1791  was  broken  to  pieces  by  the 
party  of  the  Girondins,  led  by  some  fluent  orators  without 
experience  or  statesmanship  from  the  Gironde  Disruption  of 
near  Bordeaux,  who  for  the  purpose  of  destroy-  France,  1793- 
ing  such  small  authority  as  was  still  retained  by  the  king 
and  his  executive  ministers  provoked  the  rulers  of  Prussia 
and  Austria  to  invade  France  as  allies  of  the  king.  On 
August  10,  1792,  the  mob  of  Paris,  terrified  at  the  invasion, 
sacked  the  king's  palace  of  the  Tuileries  and  took  the  king 


430  DEMAGOGUES  [chap,  xxiii. 

prisoner.  Thenceforth  a  few  bullies  who  controlled  the 
mob  could  dominate  any  deliberative  assembly.  A  new 
assembly  called  the  National  Convention  was  elected  in 
September  1792  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  new  constitu- 
tion :  under  pressure  from  the  mob  it  killed  the  king  and 
queen :  on  June  3,  1793,  it  was  invaded  by  the  populace  and 
lost  all  semblance  of  independence.  From  that  date  France 
was  for  a  time  without  a  common  government :  the  towns 
all  over  the  country,  having  never  been  genuinely  united 
with  one  another,  acted  independently  like  separate  simple 
city  states,  but  were  far  more  disorderly  than  city  states 
usually  are,  because  they  contained  no  class  that  was  in  the 
habit  of  governing.  Paris  had  such  a  precedence  over  the 
other  towns  that  it  controlled  the  foreign  policy  and  the 
armies  of  all  the  French :  but  both  in  Paris  and  in  the  other 
cities  the  inhabitants  were  free  from  any  need  to  act 
unitedly  as  soldiers  against  the  enemies  beyond  the  borders 
of  France,  because  they  had  armies  levied  mainly  from  the 
peasantry  to  do  the  fighting  for  them. 

In  simple  city  states  that  have  been  long  established  the 

classes  are  organised,  each  class  knows  its  own  interests,  and 

some  one  class  rules  over  all  other  classes.     In 

1794.  Dem-     Paris    classes  were    not    organised  and    could 

agoguesand    scarcely  be  said  to  exist.     But  after  August 

massacres.  *  r         -i  i     1       1 

1792  crafty  demagogues  pretended  that  the 
poor  of  Paris  were  the  rulers  of  the  city  and  of  France  and 
ought  to  be  the  rulers  of  the  world :  in  truth  the  leading 
demagogues  themselves  kept  a  band  of  ruffians  to  intimidate 
the  poor  and  the  rich,  the  orators  and  their  audiences :  the 
lesser  demagogues  occupied  the  benches  of  the  Convention, 
of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  of  the  Criminal  Tribunal, 
and  there  voted  as  their  leaders  bade  them.  Thus  the 
leading  demagogues  could  and  did  order  massacres  on  a 
huge  scale  under  the  name  of  judicial  executions.    The 


chap,  xxiii.]  NEW  FRENCH  ARMY  431 

leaders  were  at  one  time  Danton,  Marat,  and  Robespierre,  at 
another  Danton  alone,  and  lastly  Robespierre  alone.  But 
in  the  summer  of  1794  the  lesser  demagogues  generally 
were  convinced  that  Robespierre,  if  he  remained  in  power, 
would  certainly  send  a  large  number  of  them  to  the 
guillotine:  they  combined  against  him  and  on  July  28 
secured  his  execution.  During  the  year  after  his  overthrow 
there  was  felt  both  in  Paris  and  in  other  French  towns  a 
general  loathing  for  the  methods  of  the  demagogues  and  a 
desire  for  a  free  election  of  an  assembly  really  representa- 
tive of  all  France.  It  was  thought  that  in  a  free  election 
men  of  substance  would  have  some  influence,  and  a  freely 
elected  assembly  might  even  set  up  a  king  and  allow  the 
noblesse  to  recover  some  of  their  confiscated  estates. 

Since  the  spring  of  1793  the  French  were  at  war  with 
many  European  powers,  among  whom  Austria,  England  and 
Prussia  were  the  most  active.     In  August  of  that   „  .c    „ 

°  Unification 

year  one  of  the  demagogues  at  Paris  proposed  a  of  France, 
levee  en  masse,  or  arming  of  the  whole  male  l  I3_I  I4- 
population  of  France :  but  Danton  perceived  that  a  demand 
of  service  only  from  men  under  twenty-five  years  of  age 
would  make  a  much  better  army,  and  he  convinced  the 
Convention  that  he  was  right :  the  measure  that  he  recom- 
mended added  nearly  half  a  million  to  the  French  armies.1 
By  the  summer  of  1795,  when  the  question  of  a  free  election 
was  being  debated,  the  armies  had  learned  discipline  and 
seen  service,  and  each  of  them  was  a  far  more  united  body 
than  any  mass  of  civilians  of  equal  size  in  France.  On  the 
subject  of  a  free  election  all  the  armies  were  of  one  mind. 
The  soldiers  were  drawn  from  the  peasantry  or  the  poor, 
and  their  families  had  profited  by  the  abolition  of  privileges 
and  the  confiscations  of  lands :  their  generals  were  of  humble 
origin  and  agreed  with  the  men.    In  Paris  the  Convention, 

1  Cambridije  Modern  History,  9.  348. 


432  UNIFICATION  OF  FRANCE        [chap,  xxtti. 

though  it  now  included  many  men  who  had  opposed  the 
most  violent  demagogues,  was  resolute  against  a  free 
election  which  might  bring  persecution  of  its  members :  the 
bourgeoisie  on  the  other  hand  nearly  all  desired  that  an 
election  might  be  held  freely,  and  on  13  Venderaiaire 
(Oct.  4)  1795  they  made  a  revolt  against  the  Convention 
in  which  thirty  thousand  National  Guards  took  part.  The 
Convention  called  in  regular  troops  under  Barras  who  was 
aided  by  young  Napoleon  Buonaparte :  the  revolt  was 
quelled,  and  it  was  settled  that  there  should  be  no  free 
election  held  all  at  once.  But  a  new  constitution  was  made 
which  established  five  Directors  as  executive  governors,  and 
two  legislative  chambers,  of  which  two  thirds  were  to  be  in 
the  first  instance  men  who  had  sat  in  the  Convention,  and 
one  third  was  in  future  to  be  freely  elected  every  year :  in 
the  next  four  years  regular  troops  were  twice  called  in  by 
the  Directors  to  purge  the  chambers.  After  1804  there  was 
only  one  French  army,  a  perfectly  united  body.  In  the 
later  years  of  Napoleon  the  army  contained  all  the  men  in 
France  capable  of  service :  in  1813  and  1814  the  army  that 
fought  in  self  defence  against  all  the  powers  of  Europe  was 
scarcely  distinguishable  from  the  French  people,  and  the 
whole  population  of  France  was  for  the  first  time  a  united 
body  politic,  or  a  single  political  community. 

In  Spain  the  Castilians  submitted  readily  throughout  the 
seventeenth  century  to  their  Habsburg  kings :  the  Catalans 
(3)  1589-1814.  and  the  Biscayans  regarded  themselves  as  separate 
Spam.  peoples  alien  from  the  Castilians,  and  were  so 

regarded  by  the  kings  and  ministers  who  ruled  as  Castilians 
at  Madrid.  In  1639,  when  the  Catalans  had  already  done 
much  more  than  they  cared  to  do  in  fighting  on  behalf  of 
the  Castilians  against  the  French,  Olivarez,  the  Castilian 
minister,  tried  by  very  cruel  oppression  and  violence  to 
compel  them  to  make  still  greater  efforts  in  the  war:  in 


chap,  xxiii.]  SPAIN  433 

1640  they  revolted  from  the  Castilians,  acted  as  an  inde- 
pendent state,  and  made  an  alliance  with  the  French,  against 
whom  the  Castilians  were  trying  to  contend :  it  was  not  till 
1652  that  they  were  compelled  by  force  to  submit  to  the 
Castilians,  and  were  deprived  of  all  their  distinctive  and 
ancient  privileges.1  In  1700  on  the  death  of  Carlos  the 
Second  the  last  heir  in  a  direct  male  line  of  the  Habsburg 
kings  of  Spain,  it  became  doubtful  whether  the  next 
successor  ought  to  be  a  French  prince  or  an  Austrian :  the 
Castilians  accepted  the  French  claimant,  the  Catalans,  the 
Valencians,  and  the  Aragonese  from  1705  supported  the 
Austrian,  and  till  1713  the  Castilians  fought  on  one  side, 
and  three  other  peoples  in  Spain  on  the  other.  Long  after- 
wards between  1808  and  1814  during  the  war  of  independ- 
ence against  Napoleon  and  his  brother  Joseph  it  was  seen 
that  even  the  Castilians  were  not  one  people  but  many 
peoples :  the  many  towns  in  Castile  set  up  Juntas  of  their 
own,  and  the  Juntas  could  not  combine  and  act  harmoni- 
ously. The  reason  of  the  inability  of  the  many  peoples  in 
Spain  to  combine  must  no  doubt  be  sought  in  the  physical 
features  of  the  peninsula.  Unbroken  mountain  ranges 
divide  Castile  from  Biscay  and  from  Valencia,  Catalonia, 
and  Aragon:  Castile  itself  is  divided  by  lofty  ridges  into 
six  natural  divisions,  whose  inhabitants  till  long  after  1814 
had  only  very  bad  opportunities  of  becoming  acquainted 
and  forming  relations  of  reciprocal  friendliness. 

In  the  tenth  century  the  Germans  under  their  kings 
Henry  the  First  and  Otto  the  Great  began  making  their 
first  conquests  from  the  Slavs  to  the  east  of  the  river 
Elbe  and  planting  settlers  to  try  to  hold  the  half  conquered 
districts.     Each  piece  of  territory  that  was  entrusted  to  a 

1  Dyer,  Modern  Europe,  2.  602,  foil.  For  the  date  of  the  suppression  of 
the  Catalan  revolt  my  authority  is  the  Oxford  Chronological  Tables, 
published  1835. 

2  E 


434  BRANDENBURG  [chap,  xxiii. 

band  of  settlers  and  their  chief  was  called  a  mark  or 
frontier  province :  before  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  four 
(3)  1589-1814.  marks  had  been  established  reaching  from  the 
Prussia:  northern  border  of  Bohemia  to  the  Baltic  Sea.1 
Brandenburg  Men  living  in  frontier  provinces  during  the 
to  1589.  Middle  Ages  were  usually  exceptionally  vigorous, 

because  they  had  to  fight  in  self  defence :  one  of  the  marks 
to  the  east  of  the  Elbe  which  had  its  two  centres  at  Havelberg 
and  Bredanburch  or  Brandenburg  on  the  river  Spree  grew  to 
such  importance  that  by  the  fourteenth  century  its  mark- 
graf  was  one  of  the  seven  electors  of  the  men  called  Kaisers 
who  served  as  figureheads  of  the  Germans.  In  1415  the 
mark  of  Brandenburg,  whose  old  line  of  princes  had  died 
out,  was  given  to  Friedrich  von  Hohenzollern,  Burggraf  of 
Nurnberg.  During  the  fifteenth  century  princes  of  the 
house  of  Hohenzollern  reigned  in  Brandenburg  in  conjunc- 
tion with  a  Landtag :  by  1589  one  of  their  descendants  was 
ruling  the  Brandenburgers  with  uncontrolled  authority. 

In  1589  the  mark  of  Brandenburg  measured  about  two 

hundred  miles  from  west  to  east,  about  one  hundred  from 

north  to  south.     Between   1589   and   1795  the 

Branden- 
burg- princes  of  Brandenburg  made  large  acquisitions 

acquisitions  °*  territory  witn  reckless  haste.  One  of  them  in 
of  territory,  1614  gained  the  small  principalities  of  Cleve  and 
Mark  far  to  the  west  near  the  Netherlands :  in 
1618  he  took  over  Prussia,  as  large  as  his  mark  of  Branden- 
burg, far  away  to  the  east  on  the  coast  of  the  Baltic  Sea. 
The  Great  Elector  Frederick  William,  who  reigned  from 
1640  till  1688,  obtained  the  large  district  of  eastern 
Pomerania,  and  the  smaller  archbishopric  of  Magdeburg. 
In  1701  the  Elector  Markgraf  Frederick  the  Third,  to  signify 
his  exalted  position,  called  himself  King  of  Prussia :  a  few 
years  later  his  new  title  was  recognised  by  the  Kaiser,  and 

1  Droysen,  Handatlas,  Map  22,  23,  and  Erlaiiternder  Text,  p.  28. 


chap,  xxiil]  KINGDOM  OF  PEUSSIA  435 

thenceforth  the  Brandenburgers  have  been  misnamed 
Prussians.  Frederick  the  Great  in  1742  took  Silesia  by 
conquest  from  Austria,  and  in  1772  at  the  first  partition  of 
Poland  got  as  his  share  the  northern  part  of  the  Polish 
dominions  except  the  town  of  Dantzic,  and  so  filled  up  the 
gap  that  had  divided  eastern  Pomerania  from  Prussia. 
Finally  in  1793  and  1795  Frederick  William  the  Second  at 
the  second  and  third  partitions  of  Poland  acquired  the  town 
of  Dantzic  and  two  great  districts,  each  of  them  larger  than 
the  part  of  Poland  that  had  been  annexed  by  Frederick  the 
Great.  In  1795  the  King  of  Prussia  owned  territory  that 
covered  fully  eight  times  the  area  of  the  mark  of  Branden- 
burg which  had  been  the  whole  principality  of  his  ancestor 
at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  many  peoples  subject  to  the  King  of  Prussia  were 
dissimilar  in  race,  history,  interests,  and  desires,  and  there 
was    not   among    them  any  one    people   large 

,  ,        .  i  x  ,  Formation  of 

enough  to  dominate  the  rest.  It  was  then  lm-  a  Prussian 
possible  that  they  could  have  a  good  or  a  strong  Pe°Ple»  l8°7- 
government.  Frederick  William  the  Second 
ruled  as  a  despot,  but  his  government  was  stupid  and 
ineffectual,  and  in  its  dealings  with  the  Poles  and  the 
Austrians  from  1790  to  1793  extremely  dishonest :  Frederick 
William  the  Third  who  succeeded  his  father  in  1797  could 
not  make  any  improvement.  When  Napoleon  attacked  the 
Prussian  dominions  in  1806  they  tumbled  apart  like  a  house 
of  cards.  Napoleon  in  1806-7  took  from  the  King  of  Prussia 
all  his  subject  peoples  to  the  west  of  the  Elbe,  and  two 
thirds  of  his  dependencies  in  Poland:  the  peoples  that 
remained  to  the  king  were  only  the  Brandenburgers,  the 
Silesians,  the  Pomeranians,  the  northern  Poles,  and  the 
Prussians.  Even  these  peoples  that  were  left  to  the  king 
were  grievously  humiliated  till  1812  by  Napoleon;  but  they 
made  heroic  efforts  to  regain  their  strength,  and  by  1814  it 


436  DENMAEK  [chap,  xxiii. 

may  be  said  without  much  exaggeration  that  they  were 
consolidated  into  a  single  people. 

The  lesser  principalities  in  Germany  were  ruled  from 
]589  till  1800  by  native  despots,  whom  the  inhabitants 
for  their  own  protection  Avere  willing  to  obey,  and 
peoples,  1589-  in  each  of  them  there  existed  during  that  period 
only  one  united  people,  or  what  is  the  same 
thing  a  series  of  united  communities  in  the  generations  as 
they  followed  one  another.  But  in  Denmark  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century  there  was  no  strong  government, 
and  in  Savoy-Piemont  at  the  same  time  the  inhabitants 
were  divided  into  at  least  three  distinct  local  communities. 

In  Denmark  during  the  Thirty  Years  War  the  nobles 
elected  kings  and  formed  the  sole  powerful  and  rich  class. 
-         .         They  occupied   even   the  crown  lands,   and   in 

Denmark  J  L 

and  Savoy-  return  undertook  to  keep  the  fortresses  in  repair 
Piemont.         an(j  tQ  provj^e  them  with  garrisons :   but  they 

left  them  ruinous  and  empty  and  would  not  let  the  king 
have  an  army  lest  he  might  employ  it  to  curtail  their 
privileges.  In  consequence  of  their  selfish  behaviour 
Denmark  was  easily  overrun  by  Swedish  armies  in  1644 
under  Torstenson  and  in  1657-8  under  the  Swedish  King 
Charles  the  Tenth.  In  1660  Frederick  the  Third  King 
of  Denmark  summoned  a  representative  assembly  of  nobles, 
clergy  and  townsmen :  the  townsmen  and  the  clergy  were 
indignant  at  the  gross  misconduct  of  the  nobles,  and  insisted 
that  henceforth  their  kings  should  reign  by  hereditary  right 
and  their  power  should  be  unlimited.1  In  Savoy-Piemont 
the  Savoyards  on  the  north  and  west  side  of  the  Alps  were 
one  people,  and  the  Piemontese  on  the  south  and  east  of 
the  mountains  were  another:  beside  that  the  Piemontese 
were  Catholics  on  the  lower  grounds  and  Protestants,  called 
Vaudois,  in  upland  valleys.     In  1654  the  Duke  of  Savoy- 

1  Dyer,  Modern  Europe,  2.  618-620,  and  3.  118-1-20. 


chap,  xxiii.]  SAVOY-PIEMONT  437 

Piemont  at  the  instigation  of  the  French  minister  Mazarin 
and  with  the  aid  of  his  troops  persecuted  the  Vaudois  with 
cruelties  which  drew  from  Milton  his  noble  sonnet.  Oliver 
Cromwell  told  Mazarin  that  the  persecution  must  cease, 
and  as  Mazarin  needed  an  alliance  with  him,  he  did  not 
speak  in  vain.1  The  Duke  of  Savoy-Piemont  adopted  a 
policy  of  toleration  and  his  example  was  followed  by  his 
successors.  From  1703  to  1706  when  very  nearly  the  whole 
of  Savoy  and  Piemont  were  occupied  by  the  armies  of 
the  French  King  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  the  reigning  Duke 
Victor  Amedeo  the  Second  was  saved  from  destruction  by 
the  zealous  and  voluntary  exertions,  not  only  of  all  his 
own  subjects,  but  also  of  the  Protestants  who  lived  outside 
his  duchy  in  Geneva  and  its  neighbourhood.2  After  that 
there  were  no  more  local  dissensions  in  the  duchy  of  Savoy- 
Piemont,  which  from  1720  lost  its  proper  name  and  was 
only  a  part,  but  the  chief  part,  of  the  kingdom  of 
Sardinia. 

During  the  eighteenth  century  every  one  of  the  lesser 
kingdoms  and  principalities  contained  only  one  people.    Till 
1793  all   of  them,  except  three   or  four  which   compulsory 
were  annexed  to  Prussia,  continued  to  be  ruled  junctions  of 

,  .  ,  .  .      small 

as  separate  states  by  native  despots,  though  principalities, 
some  of  them  were  of  very  minute  proportions :  I793-i8i4. 
for  example  the  hereditary  dominion  of  Freiherr  vom  und 
zum  Stein  was  no  bigger  than  an  ordinary  estate  of  a 
country  gentleman.3  But  from  1794  when  the  French 
Republic  made  its  first  foreign  conquest  till  1814  there 
was  no  room  in  continental  Europe  for  small  independent 

1  Dyer,  Modern  Europe,  3.  23,  24. 

2  See  Me"moires  militaires  surla  Guerre  de  la  Succession  d' Espagne,  collected 
by  General  de  Vault  in  the  generation  before  1789,  edited  by  General  Pelet, 
and  published  1835  in  Doc.  Inidits.  The  evidence  about  the  Protestants  is 
clearest  in  1703. 

3  Seeley,  Life  and  Times  of  Stein,  chapter  1. 


438  GERMAN  PRINCIPALITIES        [chap,  xxiii. 

states.  The  French  annexed  first  the  southern  Netherlands, 
and  then  in  1797  and  1801  at  the  Treaties  of  Campo  Formio 
and  Luneville  all  the  German  principalities  to  the  west 
of  the  Rhine.  In  1803  compensation  was  to  be  found  for 
the  princes  who  had  lost  territories  under  the  terms  of  the 
treaties  of  Campo  Formio  and  Luneville:  the  business  of 
finding  it  was  entrusted  by  the  German  Diet,  which  was 
now  only  a  collection  of  ambassadors  of  the  German  states 
sitting  at  Regensburg,  to  a  committee  consisting  of  eight  of 
its  members.  The  committee  was  twisted  by  Buonaparte 
at  his  pleasure,  and,  when  it  issued  its  famous  Reichs- 
deputationshauptschluss,  or  Principal  Decision  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Empire,  men  saw  that  all  the  ecclesi- 
astical states  in  Germany  and  all  the  lesser  secular  states 
had  been  made  up  into  parcels  and  given  to  the  dispossessed 
princes  or  to  other  princes  whom  Buonaparte  regarded  as 
his  friends.  In  1806  the  German  states  to  the  west  of  the 
Elbe  were  joined  in  a  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  of  which 
Napoleon  was  master :  in  the  later  years  of  Napoleon  they 
were  capriciously  joined  in  new  groupings  to  form  kingdoms 
for  princes  who  served  the  French  emperor  as  his  vassals. 
Italy  was .  treated  in  like  manner  with  Germany :  in 
particular  Savoy-Piemont  in  1801  was  completely  merged 
in  France  and  governed  directly  from  Paris.  Denmark  and 
Sweden  alone  remained  under  kings  not  nominated  by 
Napoleon:  Denmark  from  1807  was  in  alliance  with 
Napoleon:  Sweden  being  accessible  by  sea  but  not  by 
land  found  it  prudent  in  1812  to  act  with  his  opponents. 

In  the  present  chapter  I  have  described  successions  of 
bodies  politic  descended  from  compulsory  junctions  of 
tribes  or  of  fiefs,  taking  as  the  starting  point  of  my  view  in 
most  cases  about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  and 
following  the  successions  of  bodies  politic  in  each  case  till 
the  time,  not    by  any   means  the    same   in  the  various 


chap,  xxiil]  GENERAL  COMMENTS  439 

countries,  when  a  united  community  was  generated.  In 
commenting  on  these  successions  of  bodies  politic  I  must 
make  a  distinction    between   those    descended   ,,„„„„,„. 

Lrenet  al  view 

from   junctions   of    tribes   and    French    bodies   of  bodies 
politic  which  were  descended  from  junctions  of  derived  from 
fiefs.      Even  the  earliest  of  the  bodies  politic  junctions  of 
descended  from  junctions   of  tribes  which  are  fiefs,  1450- 
mentioned  in  this  chapter,   though   they  were   l8l4# 
composite,  yet  had  as  the  component  parts  of  each  firstly  a 
large  united  community  which  only  longed  to  be  at  peace  at 
home  and   abroad,  and   secondly  two  or  three  small   col- 
lections of  turbulent  men  which,  when  put  together,  were 
not  nearly  equal  in  magnitude  to  the  united  community. 
In  France  on  the  other  hand  all  bodies  politic  till  1595 
and  some  as  late  as   1650  were  composed  of  small  local 
communities  which,  so  far  as  the  civilian  inhabitants  were 
concerned,  had  no   particular  liking  for  living  under  the 
government   of  the   French   king   and    paying  him   taxes 
beyond  their  capacity:    the  only  element  that  held  these 
French  bodies  politic  together  was  the  fighting  men,  who 
desired  that  they  might  be  led  to  get  plunder  in  foreign 
lands,  and  that  heavy  taxes  might  be  laid  on  the  civilian 
population  for   their  pay  and   their  maintenance.      These 
facts  explain  the  different  courses  of  conduct  adopted  in 
bodies  politic  descended  from  junctions  of  tribes  and  in 
the   French    bodies   politic    descended   from  junctions    of 
fiefs.      In   the   bodies  politic    derived   from    tribes  joined 
together  the  one  community  that  desired  peace  gladly  set 
up  and  supported  a  despotic  ruler  whose  business  it  was 
to  curb  the  small   turbulent   groups  of  men:    in  French 
bodies  politic  there  was  no  large  community  that  could  take 
any  common  action,  and  the  kings  had  power  only  so  long 
as  their  fighting  men  were  moderately  content  with  foreign 
plunder  and  all  acted  unanimously :  whenever  the  fighting 


440 


TABULAR 


[chap,  xxiii. 


men  were  discontented  and  broke  up  into  hostile  armies, 
the  king  was  powerless,  and  anarchy  supervened.  The 
principal  bodies  politic  descended  from  junctions  of  tribes 
or  of  fiefs  that  existed  in  each  country  from  about  1450  till 
such  time  as  in  each  country  one  of  them  generated  a 
single  united  community  can  be  set  forth  in  a  tabular 
form. 

BODIES    POLITIC    DESCENDED    FROM     COMPULSORY 
JUNCTIONS  OF  TRIBES  OR  OF  FIEFS,  1450-1814 

Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

1.  Descended  from  junctions  of 
tribes. 

In  England,  Sweden,  Spain  and 
similar  countries. 

Bodies  politic,  composite  indeed,    Despotic  governments,  strongly 
but  having  much  more  than       supported     by     large     corn- 
half  their  population   united       munities.     In  some  countries 
in  a  single  community  desirous       also  weak  parliaments, 
of  quietude. 

[This  description  is  correct  for 
England  and  Sweden  only  till 
1589  :  for  the  other  countries 
till  1814.] 


2.  Descended  from  junctions  of 
fiefs  in  France. 

(a)  Till  1595  and  at  some  times  Sometimes       despotic       rulers 

till    1650.       Composite    and  supported  by  an  army  only  : 

disunited  bodies  politic,  held  sometimes      wars       between 

together,  if  at  all,  only  by  an  armies      and      no      effective 

army  of  greedy  soldiers.  government. 


CHAP.    XXIII.] 


VIEW 


441 


BODIES  POLITIC  DESCENDED  FROM   COMPULSORY  JUNCTIONS 

OF  tribes  or  of  fiefs,  1450-1814. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

(b)  From  1661  till  1789  a 
succession  of  composite  bodies 
politic  held  together  only  by 
armed  force  and  by  bribery 
of  privileged  orders. 


Governments. 

King,   seemingly  strong,  really 
weak,  and  privileged  orders. 


(c)  From  1792  to  1795. 

Disruption  of  France.  Tyrannous  demagogues  in  Paris, 

sometimes  three,  sometimes 
only  one,  ruling  nearly  all 
France. 

(d)  From  1795  to  1814. 

Body  politic  gradually  becoming    A  strong  military  despot, 
a  single  community  by  being 
all  converted  into  an  army. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

UNITARY   NATIONS:    PARLIAMENTARY  GOVERNMENTS 

In  Sweden  and  in  England,  as  we  have  already  seen,1  earlier 
than  in  any  other  large  countries,  the  populations  attained 
Unitary  to  unity :  in  each  of  the  two  countries  at  different 

nations.  times  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  inhabitants 

formed  themselves  into  a  united  community  and  their 
descendants  lived  together  as  a  united  people.  After  the 
Swedes  and  the  English  had  coalesced  into  single  and  united 
peoples,  other  united  peoples  were  established  on  the 
continent.  Till  1793  nearly  all  the  united  peoples  on  the 
continent,  though  they  were  small,  had  governments  of 
native  growth  and  enjoyed  a  precarious  independence. 
Between  1794  and  1814  the  greater  part  of  these  lesser  peoples 
lost  their  native  governments  and  their  independence, 
and  even  after  1814  some  remained  subject  to  foreign  rulers. 
About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  independent 
peoples  under  native  governments  were  seen  to  be  entirely 
different  from  the  dependent  peoples,  and  a  distinctive  name 
for  them  was  needed.  In  order  to  give  them  a  name,  the 
word  nation,  which  in  the  eighteenth  century  could  denote 
any  miscellaneous  congeries  of  men  of  the  same  stock,  was 
so  restricted  in  its  usage,  that,  when  it  was  employed 
correctly  and  not  rhetorically,  it  could  only  mean  a  united 
people  living  independent  under  a  government  of  native 
growth.     But  even  so  the  word  was  not  precise  enough  to 

1  See  pp.  416,  418. 

443 


chap,  xxiv.]  UNITARY  NATIONS  443 

denote  only   those   peoples    which    were   descended   from 
compulsory  unions  of  tribes  or  of  fiefs  or  of  other  com- 
munities and  had  only  one  government  apiece.     For  there 
had  come  into  being  through  voluntary  junctions  of  com- 
munities the  nations  of  the  Swiss  and  the  Americans,  which 
for  some  purposes  had  one  government  apiece,  but  for  other 
purposes  had  many  co-ordinate  governments.     In  order  to 
distinguish  the  two  kinds  of  nations  it  is  necessary  to  give 
each  of  them  a  qualifying  adjective :  nations  which  have  one 
government  apiece  and  no  more  are  called  unitary,  and  those 
with  many  co-ordinate  governments  are  federal.     Sweden 
and  England  from  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  possessed 
all  the  qualities  implied  by  the  name  unitary  nation,  and  I 
shall  give  them  that  name  from  the  times  when  it  became 
applicable  to  them,  although  it  was  not  invented  till  more 
than   two  centuries   later.     Whenever  I  have   occasion   to 
speak  of  all  the  members  of  a  unitary  nation  who  are  living 
at  one  time  by  a  collective  name,  I  shall  call  them  a  national 
community.     That  name  cannot  properly  denote  anything 
but  the  contemporary  members  of  a  unitary  nation  :  for  the 
contemporary  members   of  a  federal  nation  are  not  one 
community  but  many,  and  the  component  communities  in 
a  federal  body  politic  are  not  national  communities,  because 
they  are  not  independent. 

When  the  first  unitary  nations  came  into  existence,  it  was 
only  by  experiment  that  they  could  discover  what  kinds  of 
government  were   conducive   to   their    welfare.   ^ 

0  .  .  Experiment- 

Accordingly  both   in   Sweden    and   in   England   aigovem- 

many  new  kinds  of  government  were  tried.     The   j^£![Lfor 

Swedes  from  1561  to  17 20 1  were  so  much  occupied  nations, 

in   striving  to  conquer  fresh  subjects  on    the 

mainland  of  Europe  outside  their  own  peninsula  that  they 

failed   to  find  any  good  method  of  managing   their  home 

1  Geijer,  Hist,  of  the  Sivtdea,  Turner's  translation,  ch.  11.  p.  149. 


444  EXPERIMENTAL  [chap.  xxiv. 

affairs :  the  English  wanted  nothing  on  the  continent,  and 
their  search  for  a  government  that  suited  their  requirements 
was  rewarded  with  success. 

As  soon  as  all  Englishmen  had  shown  in  1588  that  they 
would  fight  vigorously  against  the  Spaniards,  the  despotic 
Despotic  government  of  Elizabeth  was  no  longer  needed  : 
government  accordingly  the  nobles  and  gentry  of  new  families, 
two  Stuart  endowed  and  promoted  by  the  Tudor  sovereigns, 
kings.  having  already  gained  great  influence  with  the 

country  folk  among  whom  they  lived,  desired  to  gain  a  share 
in  directing  the  public  policy  of  the  government.  Elizabeth 
in  1601,  needing  money  for  a  war  in  Ireland,  gave  way  to 
the  wishes  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  regard  to  certain 
oppressive  monopolies  which  she  had  granted  to  some  of  her 
favourites :  but  the  first  two  kings  of  the  house  of  Stuart 
tried  to  set  up  a  government  far  more  despotic  than  any  that 
had  existed  under  the  Tudor  sovereigns.  James  laid  taxes 
of  his  own  authority :  Charles  did  the  same,  and  for  eleven 
years  governed  without  a  parliament.  In  1640  Charles, 
having  been  defeated  by  the  Scots,  and  being  unable  to  get 
money,  was  compelled  to  summon  a  parliament,  and  to 
assent  to  laws  which  forbade  all  unparliamentary  taxation, 
and  provided  that  England  should  never  be  more  than  three 
years  without  a  session  of  parliament.  But  in  January  1642 
he  tried  to  coerce  the  House  of  Commons  with  military  force, 
and  thus  caused  two  civil  wars  which  were  waged  not  for 
the  disruption  of  England  but  for  the  purpose  of  settling 
under  what  form  of  government  it  should  stand  united. 

From  1642  to  1660  nothing  was  done  towards  determining 
what  should  be  the  permanent  government  of  the 

Stages  in  the  .  r  ,  . ■        .         . 

decline  of  the   country :  but,  in  the  long  period  that  began  in 
king's  des-      1660,  when  Charles  the  Second  became  king  with 

potic  power.  . 

the  same  powers  as  his  father  had  possessed  in 
1642,  and  that  ended  in  1835,  changes  were  made  Avhich 


chap,  xxiv.]  GOVERNMENTS  445 

resulted  in  abolishing  the  king's  despotic  power  and  setting 
up  in  its  stead  a  supremacy  of  parliament.  The  course  of 
these  changes  may  be  divided  into  four  parts. 

(1)  Between   1660  and  1689  parliament  gained  a   right 

to  control  administration. 

(2)  From  1689  to  1760  parties  were  organised  in  parlia- 

ment, and  from  1714  one  party  had  exclusive  enjoy- 
ment of  office. 

(3)  From  1760  to  1811  the  king's  power  revived. 

(4)  Between    1811    and    1835    parliament    was    greatly 

strengthened  by  the  admission  of  fresh  classes  to  take 

part  in   the  election  of  members  of  the  House  of 

Commons,  and  it  was  definitely  settled  that  the  king's 

ministers  were  jointly  responsible  to  parliament,  and 

could  be  turned  out  of  office  by  an  adverse  vote  of  a 

majority  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

Charles  the  Second  always  had  less  money  than  he  desired 

for  squandering  on   his  mistresses.     In  the  first  nineteen 

years  of  his  reign  want  of  money  drove  him  to   ,^  I66o-i68o. 

summon  frequent  parliaments  and  to  make  them   Parliament 

many  concessions :  by  1679  parliament  supervised   trol  of  ad°n 

expenditure  as  well  as  taxation,  had  revived  the   ministration. 

process  of  impeachment  for  removing  a  minister  from  office, 

and   by  passing   the   Habeas   Corpus   Act  had  prevented 

imprisonment  without   trial  :   these  innovations  gave  the 

parliament  effective  control  of  administration.     But  between 

1678  and  1681  the  amazing  folly  of  the  newly  made  Country 

Party  (called  from  1680   the   Whig  Party),  shown  in  the 

credence  they  gave  to  the  fabricated  story  of  a  Popish  Plot 

and  in  their  attempt  to  make  the  bastard  Monmouth  heir  to 

the  throne  in  lieu  of  James  the  heir  by  legitimate  descent, 

destroyed  the  authority  of  parliament.     From  1681  to  1688 

Charles  and  then  James  misgoverned  as  despots  free  from 

control.     James  used  as  his  instruments  a  usurped  power  of 


446  POWERS  OF  PARLIAMENT        [chap.  xxiv. 

dispensing  with  penal  statutes,  a  standing  army  maintained 
without  leave  of  parliament,  and  a  bench  of  judges,  servile 
because  dismissible  by  the  king  at  pleasure.  At  the  very 
end  of  1688  James  ran  away  from  England :  very  early  next 
year  a  Convention  Parliament,  so  called  because  not 
summoned  by  a  king,  decided  that  the  throne  was  vacant, 
and  before  electing  a  new  king  limited  his  powers  by  a 
Declaration  of  Rights.  The  Declaration  introduced  nothing 
that  was  entirely  novel  in  the  form  of  government:  it 
reaffirmed  the  limitations  on  kingly  power  which  had  been 
established  before  1679,  and  in  regard  to  two  matters  which 
had  come  to  be  keenly  disputed  since  that  time  it  settled  for 
the  first  time  that  the  king  had  no  power  to  give  general 
dispensations  from  penal  statutes  nor  to  keep  a  standing 
army  in  time  of  peace  without  leave  of  parliament :  even  the 
crying  mischief  of  judges  dismissible  at  pleasure  was  left 
untouched,  probably  because  it  was  useless  to  make  judges 
sure  of  continuing  in  office  till  some  judges  of  tried  honesty 
had  been  found:  it  was  not  till  the  Act  of  Settlement  of 
1701  that  the  rule  was  made  that  after  the  accession  of  the 
house  of  Hanover  judges  should  hold  office  during  good 
behaviour  and  not  during  the  king's  pleasure.  The  provisions 
of  the  Declaration,  though  so  modest,  sufficed  to  ensure  for 
future  parliaments  all  the  control  over  administration  that 
was  needed.  William,  the  new  king,  almost  at  the  time  of 
his  accession  became  the  leader  of  a  great  coalition  of 
European  powers  formed  for  resistance  to  the  aggressions  of 
Louis  the  Fourteenth.  The  Mutiny  Act  which  gave  the 
king  authority  to  maintain  discipline  in  his  army  was  never 
made  to  hold  good  for  more  than  a  year  at  a  time,  and  in 
every  year  the  king  found  it  necessary  to  ask  for  a  new  act 
and  for  money  to  defray  the  cost  of  war. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  between  1660  and  1689  men 
began  to  use  the  word  Constitution  when  they  wished  to 


chap,  xxiv.]  CONSTITUTION  447 

speak  of  a  settled  form  of  government.     It  was  a  new  word. 

In  the  debates  of  parliament  in  1640  and  1641,  where  it 

would  have  been  employed  if  it  had  been  known, 

it  does  not  occur:  in  those  debates  the  nearly   'constitu- 

equivalent  term  established  government  occurs     on' 

only  once,  since  settled  methods  of  ruling  were  a  thing  still 

desired,  and  not  yet  possessed.1     But  in  The  Character  of  a 

Trimmer  written  in   1685   by   George  Savile,  Marquis  of 

Halifax,  but  not  published  till  1688,  Constitution  occurs  five 

times  in  the  first  thirty  pages.2    The  word  means  literally  a 

settling  together,  and  when  used  as  a  political  term  denotes 

such  a  settlement  of  the  relations  between  the  powers  in  a 

government  as  has  been  established  by  law  and  custom. 

Halifax,  the  great  Trimmer,  shows  by  the  context  in  which 

he  uses  the  word  that  he  gave  it  much  the  same  sense  as 

we  now  give  it,  and  that  he  knew  that  sense  would  be  familiar 

to  his  readers.     The  word  was  appropriate  in  his  time  because 

there  were  already  powers,  not  merely  one  power,  in  the 

government,  and   the  relations   between   the  powers  were 

becoming  defined. 

By  1689  politicians  were  divided  into  Whigs  and  Tories. 

For  six  years  from  that  time  William  chose  some  ministers 

from  the  Whigs  and  others  from  the  Tories :  but    ,  ,   oM 

,°  .  (2)  1689-1760. 

the  plan  was  inconvenient,  because  the  members  Parties  in 
of  the  two  houses  of  parliament  were  not  informed  arljament- 
by  their  party  names  which  way  they  were  expected  to  vote 
on  any  particular  proposal,  and  the  ministers  could  not  be 
sure  of  a  stable  majority.  In  1695  the  king  tried  the  experi- 
ment of  choosing  all  his  ministers  from  among  the  Whigs : 
but  in  his  later  years  and  in  the  reign  of  Anne  till  1710 

1  My  authority  is  a  collection  of  Speeches  in  the  Great  Parliament,  published 
by  W.  Cooke,  London,  1641,  in  a  volume  of  about  600  pages. 

2  In  Miscellanies  by  the  late  Lord  Marquis  of  Halifax,  1704,  pp.  97,  98, 113, 
114,  115.  For  the  dates  of  the  composition  and  of  the  publication  of  the 
Character,  see  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  article  on  'Savile,  George,'  p.  359. 


448  PARTIES  [chap.  xxiv. 

Whigs  and  Tories  were  commonly  employed  together  as 
ministers.  From  1714,  however,  when  the  first  Hanoverian 
king  began  his  reign  no  Tories  could  be  put  in  office,  because 
Tories  in  general  were  suspected  of  a  desire  to  bring  in  a 
Stuart  Pretender  as  king :  from  the  accession  of  George  the 
First  till  the  death  of  George  the  Second  in  1760  all  ministers 
were  Whigs,  except  from  1756  the  elder  Pitt  who  was  neither 
a  Whig  nor  a  Tory,  but  was  needed  as  minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs.  It  was  easy  for  the  Whig  ministers  to  keep  majorities 
in  the  two  houses  of  parliament,  because  no  class  except  the 
nobles  and  the  rich  gentry  had  any  means  of  exercising 
influence  on  the  members  of  the  houses.  The  lords  sat  of 
right  in  their  own  house,  and  they  with  the  wealthy  gentle- 
men nominated  more  than  three  fourths  of  the  lower  house 
through  their  influence  over  the  small  close  corporations 
which  elected  the  members  for  cities  and  boroughs.  The 
patrons  of  boroughs  generally  provided  the  ministers  with 
majorities  because  they  hoped  for  dignities  or  offices :  if  that 
motive  did  not  suffice,  they  could  be  bribed  with  public 
money.  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  Prime  Minister  from  1721  to 
1742,  kept  his  colleagues  in  the  ministry  under  strict  control : 
but  there  was  no  rule  that  all  ministers  were  responsible  for 
the  actions  of  their  chief,  and  that  if  he  were  turned  out  of 
office  they  must  go  too.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  was  compelled 
in  1742  to  resign  from  the  purely  personal  reason  that 
members  of  the  Commons  did  not  like  his  imperious  control : 
but,  when  he  went,  nearly  all  his  colleagues  remained  in 
office  under  his  successor. 

In  1760,  when  George  the  Third  began  his  reign,  the 
Whigs  were  thoroughly  discredited  as  rulers.  For  the  past 
fifteen  years  they  had  never  been  sure  that  any  one  would 
stand  by  them  except  the  lords  and  the  rich  gentry,  and 
in  1756,  when  war  against  France  was  needed  for  the 
defence  of  the  American  colonies,  they  were  too  timorous  to 


chap,  xxiv.]  GEORGE  III.  449 

conduct  it,  and  were  glad  to  hand  the  work  over  to  Pitt. 
The  Tories  of  1760  were  not  like  the  Tories  of  1715  and  of 
1745:  they  could  not  be  supposed  to  be  Jacobites,   ,    „    . 

J  rr  '    (3)  Revival 

because  there  was  now  no  descendant  of  the  of  kingly 
Stuarts  who  could  be  set  up  as  a  Pretender.  P°wer- 
Whigs  then  and  Tories  were  equally  capable  of  being 
employed  as  ministers.  The  king  played  off  one  party 
against  the  other,  and  by  1784  had  so  weakened  them  that 
he  could  take  as  his  Prime  Minister  the  younger  Pitt,  who, 
like  his  father,  was  neither  a  Whig  nor  a  Tory,  and  thought 
that  in  the  main  the  king's  views  about  policy  were  right. 
From  1784  to  1811  the  members  of  the  two  houses  voted  as 
the  king  wished,  and  at  all  times,  except  for  a  twelvemonth  in 
1805-6,  the  Prime  Minister  was  either  Pitt  or  a  disciple  of  Pitt. 
Before  1784  the  wealth  of  England  had  been  marvellously 
increased  by  the  invention  of  mechanical  engines  and 
appliances  which  made  it  possible  to  produce  useful 
commodities  in  quantities  many  times  as  great  as  hitherto. 
During  the  great  war  against  France,  parliaments  granted 
moneys  in  amounts  never  dreamt  of  before,  Englishmen  gave 
their  lives  willingly  for  the  defence  of  the  common  weal, 
and  till  1811  George  the  Third  was  far  more  powerful  than 
any  other  sovereign  in  the  world  except  Napoleon. 

After  1811,  when  King   George  became  insane,  kingly 
power  grew  less.     The  king's  eldest  son,  who  became  first 
regent,  and  afterwards  king,  was   of  despicable 
character.     The  mechanical   inventions,   which  acyofa"™ 
had  multiplied  produce,  had  also  made  it  neces-  reformed 

.  parliament. 

sary  for  artisans  to  work  together  in  factories, 
where  they  conferred  with  one  another,  and  determined  on 
courses  of  concerted  action.  Many  of  the  laws  made  by 
nobles  and  gentry  pressed  hard  on  them,  and  they  saw 
clearly  that  they  would  not  be  treated  with  consideration 
until  they  obtained  a  share  in  electing   members  of  the 

9f 


450  SUPEEMACY  OF  PARLIAMENT     [chap.  xxiv. 

House  of  Commons.  In  1831  it  was  seen  that,  unless  the 
laws  relating  to  elections  of  representatives  were  altered, 
insurrections  would  ensue,  and  in  the  next  year  changes 
were  made  which  gave  the  artisans  a  right  to  vote  at 
elections,  and  transferred  many  seats  in  the  House  of 
Commons  from  decayed  villages  to  large  and  prosperous 
towns.  In  1834  William  the  Fourth  dismissed  his  ministers, 
though  they  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  both  Houses  of 
Parliament,  and  set  other  men  in  their  places.  In  1835  the 
new  ministers,  being  outvoted  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
were  compelled  to  resign  office,  and  it  became  clear  that  the 
Commons  could  if  they  chose  get  rid  of  any  ministry. 
After  the  debates  on  the  changes  of  ministries  in  1834  and 
1835,  it  was  accepted  as  a  rule  that  every  minister  was 
answerable  for  the  acts  of  all  the  ministers,  and  the  ministers 
were  a  Cabinet  jointly  responsible  to  parliament,  and 
especially  to  the  House  of  Commons,  which  was  more 
powerful  than  the  House  of  Lords. 

Within  the  period   from   1588   to   1835,   in   which   the 

English  were   trying  what  government   suited   them   as  a 

united  nation,  they  found  it  desirable  on  two 

National  .  J 

unity  of  occasions  to  take  bodies  of  men  who  were  not 

Britain  English  under  a  common  government  with  them- 

attainedby  selves.  After  their  junctions  with  the  Scots  and 
with  the  Irish  their  nation  was  no  longer  a  whole 
body  politic  standing  by  itself,  but  it  was  decidedly  the 
strongest  and  largest  part  in  a  composite  body  politic.  The 
Scots  in  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
rather  many  peoples  than  one  people :  but  their  parliament 
consented  voluntarily  in  1707  that  all  the  Scots  in  order  to 
gain  opportunities  for  trading  more  advantageously  should 
come  under  a  common  government  with  the  English.  In 
1715  and  in  1745  the  Scots  rebelled  in  favour  of  a  Stuart 
Pretender :  but  after  the  suppression  of  the  second  rebellion 


chap,  xxtv.]  SCOTLAND,  IEELAND  451 

the  descendants  of  the  rebels  gradually  coalesced  with  the 
English,  and  before  1830  a  united  nation  of  Great  Britain 
had  been  established. 

In  Ireland  no  approach  had   ever   been   made  towards 
forming  a  united  people.     English  kings  had  nominally  been 
rulers  of  the  country  since  the  Middle  Ages,  but 
few  of  them  had  attempted  to  govern  it:   by  the  Irish  ° 
establishing  a  parliament,  which  was  totally  out   J^*|  preat 

Britain. 

of  place  in  such  a  country,  they  had  made 
discords  more  dangerous.  From  1495  to  1782  the  Irish 
parliament  was  kept  subordinate  to  the  government  of 
England :  in  1782  a  Whig  government  in  England  set  it 
free  from  English  control,  but  kept  the  appointment  of 
executive  officers  for  Ireland  in  the  hands  of  the  ministers 
in  England.  The  Irish  House  of  Commons  was  elected  only 
by  absurdly  minute  constituencies,  whose  votes  were  con- 
trolled entirely  by  a  few  rich  men  of  English  families  owning 
estates  in  Ireland.  Pitt,  after  becoming  Prime  Minister  of 
England  in  1784,  soon  formed  the  opinion  that  the  discord- 
ant elements  in  Ireland  could  not  be  kept  quiet  by  any  parlia- 
ment elected  by  one  or  by  many  or  by  all  of  those  elements. 
In  1798  disorder  and  violence  broke  loose  in  what  was  called 
a  rebellion,  but  was  rather  a  strife  of  many  hostile  factions. 
The  only  persons  who  cared  much  that  there  should  be  a 
semblance  of  a  separate  government  for  Ireland  were  the 
few  rich  men  who  nominated  the  members  of  the  Irish 
House  of  Commons  and  sold  the  nominations  to  the  best 
bidder.  In  1801  the  interests  of  these  men  were  bought  up 
by  the  ministers  in  England  with  hard  cash,  and  titles,  and 
honours,  and  the  sundry  factions  of  the  Irish  were  brought 
under  a  common  government  with  the  English  and  the 
Scots:  a  parliament  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  was 
established,  and  in  1832  the  right  to  vote  for  representatives 
was  given  to  Irishmen  without  regard  to   their  creed  as 


452  CONTINENTAL  [chap.  xxiv. 

widely  as  to  the  English  and  the  Scots.  By  about  1860  the 
mass  of  men  under  the  government  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  were  not  indeed  one  united  nation :  but  the  English 
and  the  Scots  and  the  north  eastern  Irish  were  united  in 
desires  and  aims,  and  they  hoped  that  some  future  genera- 
tion of  the  other  Irish  might  be  joined  in  friendship  and 
national  unity  with  their  descendants. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe,  as  we  have  already  seen,  many 

united  peoples  had  been  formed  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  members  of  a  united  people  who  live  together 

communities,   at  any  one  time  are  a  community :  thus  in  the 

4'  year   1800    there  were    many  communities   in 

continental  Europe.  In  1814  two  of  these  communities,  the 
Swedes  and  the  Danes,  were  still  separate  under  native 
governments :  the  rest  had  been  grouped  together  in  large 
or  small  masses  into  composite  bodies  politic:  but  on  the 
other  hand  new  communities  had  been  formed  in  France 
and  in  the  reduced  territory  of  Prussia.  After  the  abdica- 
tion of  Napoleon  and  his  relegation  to  Elba  it  had  to  be 
decided  which  of  the  communities  should  be  separate  under 
native  governments,  and  which  should  stay  in  their  existing 
groups  or  be  put  in  new  groups. 

The  decision  of  these  questions  rested  with  the  Great 
Powers  of  Europe  acting  on  May  30  in  their  treaty  of 
Continental  ^&ris  &n&  from  September  20  at  the  Congress  of 
communities,  Vienna.  The  pronouncements  of  the  Congress  in 
regard  to  political  delimitations  within  Germany 
need  not  detain  us  long.  They  did  not  undo  the  work 
accomplished  in  1803  by  the  Committee  of  the  Diet,  which 
had  gathered  the  minute  German  communities  into  groups, 
though  they  modified  its  details  in  order  to  reward  princes 
who  had  helped  to  overthrow  Napoleon,  and  to  punish  at 
least  one  of  his  adherents.  It  followed  that  many  or  all  of 
the  larger  kingdoms  or  principalities  which  they  recognised 


chap,  xxiv.]  COMMUNITIES  453 

or  established  in  Germany  contained  many  communities 
apiece,  and  could  not  for  some  generations  to  come  con- 
stitute themselves  as  unitary  nations :  as  a  matter  of  fact 
all  of  them  renounced  all  notion  of  becoming  unitary  nations 
in  1866  or  1871  when  by  their  own  acts  they  ceased  to  be 
independent  and  separate.  Outside  of  Germany  the  Con- 
gress recognised  every  kingdom  which  had  been  inde- 
pendent in  1792  as  still  independent,  but  it  transferred 
the  Norwegians,  now  a  thoroughly  united  community,  from 
the  King  of  Denmark  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  and  the 
southern  Netherlanders  from  the  emperor  of  Austria,  who 
declined  to  keep  them,  to  the  hereditary  Stadholder,  now 
king,  of  the  Dutch  Netherlands.  The  Norwegians  im- 
mediately resisted  annexation  to  Sweden,  and  obtained  a 
government  of  their  own  for  all  but  foreign  affairs.  The 
southern  Netherlanders  in  1830  rebelled  against  the  Dutch 
king,  and  in  1833  it  was  finally  settled  that  they  should  form 
the  independent  state  of  Belgium:  the  name  Netherlands 
consequently  denoted  only  the  Dutch  Netherlands.  In 
1833  six  communities,  the  Swedes,  the  Danes,  the  Savoyards 
and  Piemontese,  the  French,  the  Dutch,  and  the  Belgians 
were  independent  under  native  governments,  and  it  was 
therefore  likely  that  the  descendants  of  each  of  them 
would  constitute  such  a  succession  of  independent  com- 
munities as  bears  the  name  of  nation.  The  Norwegians 
were  obliged  to  act  in  foreign  affairs  as  the  Swedes  pre- 
scribed, but  they  were  so  vigorous  and  so  united  that  they 
and  their  descendants  in  every  generation  were  sure  of  having 
such  a  government  as  they  might  desire  for  the  conduct  of 
internal  business.  During  the  nineteenth  century  I  shall 
generally  consider  the  Norwegians  as  forming  a  seventh 
unitary  nation,  though  it  was  not  till  1905  that  by  their 
complete  separation  from  Sweden  they  gained  a  perfect 
title  to  be  so  regarded. 


454  CONTINENTAL  [chap.  xxiv. 

When   the  power  of  Napoleon  was  broken  in  1814,  the 

event  was  so  momentous  that  no  one  perfectly  understood 

all  that  had  happened.     The  communities  every- 

Passive  stti- 

tude  of  com-  where  except  in  Norway  remained  passive.  In 
munities,  Norway  the  Danish  Stadholder,  on  hearing  that 
the  Norwegians  were  to  be  handed  over  to  the 
king  of  Sweden,  summoned  a  national  convention.  The 
convention  in  April  1814  made  a  constitution  with  re- 
presentative institutions,  which  was  only  slightly  altered 
in  November  of  the  same  year  when  the  Norwegians 
accepted  the  king  of  Sweden  as  their  sovereign.1  The 
Danes  and  the  Swedes  kept  their  governments  as  they 
were.  The  Savoyards  and  Piemontese  took  back  their 
native  despotic  king  who  since  1802  had  reigned  only  in 
the  isle  of  Sardinia.  In  France  and  in  the  Netherlands 
some  changes  were  made,  but  their  character  was  not 
determined  by  any  action  on  the  part  of  their  communities. 
In  dealing  with  the  Netherlands  and  with  France  the 
governments  allied  together  against  Napoleon  were  corn- 
Constitutions  Polled  to  form  some  immediate  decisions  as  to 
of  France  the  internal  organisation  of  the  two  countries. 
Netherlands,  In  December  1813  the  allied  armies  after  their 
1814.  great    victory   at    Leipzig  entered    the    Dutch 

Netherlands  and  enabled  William,  son  of  the  last  Stad- 
holder, to  assume  authority  there  as  sovereign  prince.2 
William,  knowing  well  enough  that  the  Dutch  could  not 
be  governed  despotically,  and  acting  no  doubt  with  the 
advice  of  the  allied  Great  Powers,  himself  drew  up  a 
constitution,  and  in  March  1814  offered  it  to  a  body  of 
notables  whom  he  had  selected.  The  notables  were  satisfied 
and  accepted  what  was  put  before  them.  When  the 
southern  Netherlanders  were  made  subject  to  William, 
he  appointed  commissioners,  half  of  them  Dutch  and  half 

1  Dareste,  Const.  Modemes,  2.  159.  2  Dyer,  Mod.  Europe,  4.  537. 


chap,  xxiv.]  CONSTITUTIONS  455 

southerners,  to  make  a  slightly  altered  constitution.  This 
was  accepted  readily  by  the  Dutch,  but  only  by  a  minority 
of  the  southerners :  William,  however,  declared  it  to  be  in 
force  for  his  whole  dominions.1  In  France  the  Great  Powers, 
Russia,  Prussia,  Austria,  and  England,  were  resolved  that 
there  should  be  no  despot :  they  knew  that  a  despot  in  France 
had  always  been  a  plague  to  his  neighbours.  They  installed 
Louis  the  Eighteenth  as  king :  but  he  knew  that  he  reigned 
only  by  their  favour  and  must  attend  to  their  wishes. 
Accordingly  he  thought  it  prudent  to  issue  a  charter  with- 
out delay,  which  established  for  France  a  government 
resembling  as  nearly  as  might  be  that  which  then  existed 
in  England,  with  a  hereditary  king,  an  upper  chamber  of 
peers  nominated  by  the  king  to  sit  for  life  and  in  cases 
determined  by  the  king  to  transmit  their  dignity  to  their 
descendants,  a  lower  chamber  of  representatives  chosen  by 
those  few  Frenchmen  who  paid  not  less  than  three  hundred 
francs  yearly  in  direct  taxes,  and  ministers  who  were 
members  of  one  of  the  chambers.  The  two  chambers 
were  to  have  no  opportunity  of  spontaneous  activity,  since 
they  could  not  initiate  proposals:  their  function  was  to 
discuss  matters  submitted  to  them  by  the  ministers.2 

Between  1830  and  1884  the  national  communities,  being 
now  practically  assured  of  their  independence,  could  make 
trials  of  forms  of  government.    The  Belgians  in   Govem- 
1831,  the  Dutch  in  1848,  the  Danes  in  1849,  and   me°ts  of 
the  Swedes  in  1866  peaceably  took  constitutions  communities, 
after    the   English    model.3     In    1848    Charles   1830-1884. 
Albert,  King  of  Sardinia-Savoy-Piemont,  and  his  son  Victor 
Emmanuel,  desiring    the  vigorous    aid   of   their    subjects 
for  a  war  against  Austria,  gave  them  a  constitution  of  the 

1  Dareste,  Const.  Modernes,  1.  78. 

1  Fyffe,  Modern  Europe,  376. 

3  For  dates  see  Dareste,  Const.  Modernes. 


456  PAELIAMENTARY  [chap.  xxiv. 

English  type.     They  were  badly  defeated  in   the  war,  but, 
when  it  was  ended,  Victor  Emmanuel,  who  had  become  king, 
did   not   attempt   to   rescind    the    constitution,    and    was 
therefore  known   as   il  re  gatantuomo,  the  honest   king. 
The  French  in  1830  expelled  their  king  Charles  the  Tenth 
for  disregarding  their  constitution,  and  took  in  his  stead  his 
distant  cousin  Louis  Philippe,  but  made  no  change  in  their 
methods  of  government  beyond  a  trivial  extension  of  the 
right  to  vote  in  elections  to  all  who  paid  two  hundred  francs 
yearly  in  direct  taxes.     After  1846  they  were  disgusted  with 
Louis  Philippe,  because  in  all  his  dealings  and  especially  in 
his  dishonest  foreign  policy  he  thought  only  of  his  family 
and  not  of  his  subjects  and  their  welfare.     In  1848  they  set 
up  a  republican  government  which  could  not  keep  order. 
Before  long  a  Buonaparte,  nephew  of  Napoleon,  was  elected 
as  President  by  universal   suffrage,  and  in  1851  he  made 
himself  a  despot.     After  his  adventurous  foreign  policy  had 
led  in  1870  to  his  downfall,  the  French  between  1871  and 
1884  established  a  government  that  was  constructed  mainly 
on  English  lines,  but  provided  for  a  President  elected  by  the 
legislative  chambers,  and  gave  a  right  to  vote  in  elections 
practically  to   every  adult  Frenchman.      In   England   the 
right  to  vote  was  diffused  widely,  but  not  so  widely  as  in 
France :  since  1884  it  has  been  possessed  by  every  English- 
man who  has  a  house  or  lodging  in  his  occupation,  and  has 
kept  it  for  half  a  year. 

In  the  last  third  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  national 
communities  were  those  that  lived  in  Great  Britain,  France. 
Parliamentary  Belgium,  the  Netherlands,  Denmark,  Sweden 
governments   and  Norway :  the  inhabitants  of  Savoy-Piemont 

of  national 

communities,  were  not  a  national  community  because  they  had 
1871-1900.  merged  themselves  in  a  voluntary  union  with  the 
other  Italian  peoples :  the  Italians  taken  collectively  could 
not  as  yet  be  confidently  called  a  single  community.     The 


chap,  xxiv.]  GOVEKNMENTS  457 

national  communities  had  obtained  governments  suited  to 
their  requirements.  They  wanted  governments  whose 
organs  would  act  harmoniously  together,  and  pay  regard 
to  the  welfare  of  all  classes  and  to  the  opinions  of  those 
classes  that  had  opinions  worth  considering,  but  would  not 
legislate  hastily.  These  requirements  were  met  by  the 
governments  they  had  set  up,  which  we  may  best  call 
parliamentary.  Attention  to  the  opinions  of  all  classes 
was  ensured  by  the  presence  and  predominant  influence  of 
a  deliberative  chamber  elected  by  all  classes  that  were 
capable  of  discerning  what  was  useful  for  the  common  weal. 
Hasty  legislation  was  made  improbable  by  the  existence 
of  a  second  deliberative  chamber  whose  consent  was 
required  before  any  new  law  could  be  imposed  on  the  com- 
munity. Harmony  between  the  deliberative  and  the  executive 
organs  was  secured  by  the  practice  of  choosing  the  executive 
ministers  from  among  the  members  of  the  deliberative 
chambers,  which  gave  the  deliberators  and  the  executors 
constant  opportunities  of  meeting  in  debate.  Lastly,  the 
communities  needed  some  machinery  for  ensuring  that 
the  laws  when  made  would  be  applied  in  particular  instances 
according  to  their  tenour,  without  regard  to  dictation  of  the 
ministers  or  to  popular  clamour.  This  was  ensured  by  the 
method  of  entrusting  the  business  of  applying  the  laws  to 
skilled  judges  independent  of  the  ministers,  who  were  aided 
in  their  decisions  by  small  juries  taken  at  haphazard  and 
bound  to  hear  witnesses  to  facts  and  to  declare  the  con- 
clusions which  they  had  formed  after  listening  to  the 
evidence  given  by  the  witnesses. 

In  the  governments  of  the  national  communities  at  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  parliaments  were  in 
theory  supreme.  They  had  the  sole  right  to  impose  taxes 
and  give  assent  to  laws;  and  they  supervised  the  whole 
course  of  administration.     But  the  ministers  proposed  the 


458  FIRST  CHAMBERS  [chap.  xxiv. 

taxes  and  the  laws :  the  parliaments  deliberated  on  such 
laws  as  the  ministers  submitted  to  them.  The  ministers,  as 
Great  power  l°ng  as  they  possessed  the  confidence  of  the 
of  ministers     chambers,    were    their    leaders,    and    in   their 

in  parlia- 
mentary capacity  of  leaders  exercised  the  right  of  taxa- 

governments.  ^on  an(j  iegisiati0n  which  in  theory  belonged  to 
the  chambers.  The  greatest  power  wielded  by  the  chambers 
arose  from  the  fact  that  they  could  withdraw  their  confidence 
from  the  ministers.  This  power,  if  exercised  by  a  second 
or  upper  chamber,  seldom  took  much  effect :  if  it  was  used 
by  a  first  or  lower  chamber  it  usually  drove  the  ministers 
out  of  office.  But  in  five  out  of  the  seven  national  com- 
munities the  ministers  could,  if  they  chose,  dissolve  the 
lower  chamber  and  stay  in  office  till  a  new  chamber  had 
been  elected :  in  these  five  countries  the  lower  chambers 
were  shy  of  withdrawing  their  confidence  from  the  ministers, 
and  the  ministers  were  almost  always  stronger  than  the 
parliaments. 

The  rules  governing  the  election  of  members  of  the  first 
deliberative  chamber  were  not  everywhere  the  same.  In 
-_  i  France  the  electors  were  about  a  fourth  part  of 

First  or  r 

lower  the  population,  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  about 

c  ers*  a  sixth :  in  Belgium  a  fourth  part  had  votes,  but 
in  that  fourth  the  half  that  possessed  most  wealth  and  most 
education  had  two  or  three  votes  apiece,  so  that  the  very 
poor  and  the  ignorant  might  be  outvoted.  In  Denmark 
and  in  Norway  the  voters  were  a  fifth  of  the  inhabitants,  in 
the  Netherlands  a  ninth,  in  Sweden  a  fourteenth.1  In  France 
and  in  England  far  more  than  half  the  voters  knew  nothing 
outside  of  their  own  town  or  village  or  employment.  In 
England  the  ignorance  of  the  voters  did  not  for  the  time 
being  greatly  damage  the  character  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
because  the  voters  were  accustomed  to  trust  men  whose 

1  Statesman's  Year  Book  for  1904. 


chap,  xxiv.]  SECOND  CHAMBERS  459 

fathers  and  ancestors  had  been  wont  to  exert  themselves 
for  the  welfare  of  their  neighbours,  and  chose  such  men  to 
be  their  spokesmen  in  parliament :  in  France  there  was  no 
enlightened  class  that  was  generally  trusted,  and  the  narrow 
views  of  the  constituencies  were  reflected  in  their  delegates. 
In  Norway  employments  were  few  and  much  alike,  and 
intelligence  and  property  were  evenly  distributed :  hence  it 
came  about  that  a  man  chosen  by  any  constituency  to  pro- 
mote its  interests  was  well  qualified  to  form  a  sound  opinion 
on  the  interests  of  the  whole  community. 

Second  chambers  were  intended  to  form  and  express  a 
second  and  independent  opinion  on  the  work  done  in  the 
first  chamber,  and  to  prevent  errors  committed  second 
by  the  first  chamber  from  doing  harm.  For  the  chambers, 
due  performance  of  their  task  second  chambers  did  not 
need  to  be  equals  in  power  with  the  first  chambers,  but 
they  needed  to  be  of  different  composition  from  the  first 
chambers,  and  more  than  their  equals  in  wisdom :  their 
business  was  not  to  compel  but  to  persuade.  The  English 
House  of  Lords  was  a  strange  body  to  undertake  such 
functions,  because  its  members  obtained  their  seats  by 
inheritance,  and  three  fourths  of  them  were  useless  as 
advisers:  but  the  incapables  stayed  away  and  those  who 
remained  did  their  work  admirably.  On  the  great  occasion 
in  1895,  when  they  rejected  a  bill  for  setting  up  a  separate 
parliament  and  executive  government  for  Ireland,  the 
voters  at  a  general  election  approved  their  action.  But  a 
hereditary  second  chamber  would,  unless  its  weak  members 
knew  their  own  weakness,  be  the  worst  second  chamber  that 
could  be  imagined:  accordingly  the  continental  national 
communities,  when  they  needed  to  construct  second 
chambers,  never  thought  of  making  membership  depend 
on  birth.  In  these  communities  members  of  second 
chambers   were  elected:  but  in  most  countries  attempts 


460  CABINETS  [chap.  xxiv. 

were  made  to  construct  second  chambers,  called  in  France 
and  Belgium  senates,  different  from  the  first  chambers  by 
special  rules  defining  who  should  elect  them,  who  could  sit 
in  them,  and  for  how  long.  In  France,  for  example,  the 
electors  of  senators  were  members  of  local  governing  bodies 
who  had  been  themselves  elected :  and  the  senators  sat  for 
nine  years,  and  only  a  third  of  them  retired  every  third 
year.  In  Sweden  the  second  chamber  was  elected  by  local 
governments:  both  in  Sweden  and  in  Belgium  only  rich 
men  could  sit  in  the  second  chambers.  But  none  of  the 
efforts  made  in  continental  national  communities  to  differ- 
entiate second  chambers  from  first  chambers  were  completely 
successful.  In  Norway  no  attempt  to  keep  them  unlike 
was  made.  All  members  of  the  Storthing  or  parliament 
were  elected  at  once,  and  the  members  thus  elected  chose 
out  a  fourth  of  their  own  number  to  form  a  Lagthing  or 
upper  chamber :  the  remaining  three  fourths  were  the  first 
chamber  or  Odelsthing.1  In  1883,  when  eleven  ministers 
gave  offence  to  the  Odelsthing,  it  was  seen  that  the 
chambers  in  Norway  could  not  conduct  an  impeachment  in 
a  dignified  manner.  The  members  of  the  Odelsthing  were 
the  accusers,  and  the  members  of  the  Lagthing  who  sat  as 
judges  were  men  just  like  the  accusers,  and  had  recently 
been  elected  by  the  accusers.  No  great  harm  however 
came  of  the  non  judicial  character  of  the  Lagthing:  the 
ministers  were  only  sent  away  into  private  life,  and  that 
could  have  been  done  in  any  other  community  without 
pretence  of  judicial  process.2 

The  office  of  prime  minister  was  said  to  be  conferred  by 
the  hereditary  sovereign,  in  France  by  the  President,  or  any 
man  whom  he  might  choose:  but  in  truth  the  only  man 

1  My  details  about  second  chambers  come  from  Dareste,  Comt.  Mvdernes. 

2  My  authority  for  the  proceedings  in  1883  is  Rigsrettensefterretninger, 
Reports  of  the  High  Court  of  the  Kingdom,  published  at  Kristiania  while  the 
impeachment  was  going  on. 


chap,  xxiv.]  LAW  COURTS  461 

who  at  any  given  time  was  willing  to  accept  it  was  he  who 
could  command  most  support  in  the  first  chamber.  The 
prime  minister  chose  other  ministers.      The  de- 

...  Cabinets. 

partments  of  administration  were  put  under  the 
supervision  of  individual  ministers :  but  the  most  important 
work  of  the  ministers  was  done  when  they  all  met  as  a 
cabinet  and  in  secret  conference  decided  what  should  be 
their  common  line  of  action.  In  five  countries  the  cabinet 
was  on  most  occasions  more  powerful  than  the  parliament 
because  the  hereditary  sovereign  had  the  power  to  dissolve 
the  lower  chamber  and  used  that  power  according  to  the 
advice  of  the  prime  minister.  In  Norway,  where  the 
Storthing  sat  always  for  three  years  and  during  that  time 
could  not  bo  dissolved,  and  in  France,  where  a  dissolution  of 
the  first  chamber  required  the  sanction  of  the  senate, 
parliaments  were  strong  and  cabinets  were  weak. 

Impartial  decisions  in  law  courts  were  not  less  essential 
to  national  welfare  than  harmonious  working  of  chambers 
and  cabinets.     In  order  that  the  courts  might 

Law  Courts. 

judge  rightly,  men  learned  in  the  law  were 
chosen  to  preside  over  them,  and  were  protected  from 
ministerial  dictation:  judges,  jurymen,  and  witnesses  were 
by  the  desire  of  the  parliaments  and  the  peoples 
shielded  by  the  executive  authorities  from  intimidation. 
As  the  executive  ministers  could  best  discover  what  men 
were  skilled  in  the  law,  one  of  the  ministers  appointed  the 
judges:  and,  as  the  judges  were  to  be  immune  from 
ministerial  meddling,  they  were  paid  large  salaries,  and 
could  not  be  removed  from  office  except  at  the  desire  of 
both  chambers  of  parliament.  Since  the  courts  were  pro- 
tected by  the  executive  governments,  which  wielded  the 
whole  physical  force  at  the  disposal  of  the  communities,  no 
attempt  to  coerce  them  or  frighten  their  members  with 
threats  was  likely  to  originate  within  a  national  community 


462  DIGNIFIED  [chap.  xxiv. 

unless  it  were  part  of  a  plot  designed  to  overthrow  the 
executive  government  and  the  parliament  by  violence. 
One  plot  of  this  kind  was  concocted  in  France  from  1894  to 
1898  by  the  staff  of  the  War  Office,  and  the  plotters  in  the 
course  of  their  proceedings  found  it  necessary  to  employ 
military  officers  and  newspapers  to  intimidate  judges  and 
jurymen  in  a  criminal  trial.1  During  the  first  eight  months 
of  1898  it  seemed  that  the  plot  had  succeeded,  and  that  the 
civilian  government  was  compelled  to  obey  the  military 
conspirators :  but  on  August  30  it  was  discovered  that 
a  document  which  had  been  produced  before  the  first 
chamber  for  the  purpose  of  justifying  the  action  of  the  War 
Office  was  a  forgery,  and  had  been  made  in  the  War  Office 
by  an  over  zealous  member  of  the  staff.  In  1899,  a  resolute 
premier,  Waldeck-Rousseau,  took  office :  General  Gallifet, 
an  honest  man,  was  appointed  as  minister  of  war:  the 
officers  were  compelled  to  obey  the  civilian  government, 
and  the  law  courts  recovered  their  independence.  Intimida- 
tions of  judges  in  southern  Italy  by  brigands,  and  of  juries 
and  witnesses  in  central,  western  and  southern  Ireland, 
did  not  affect  the  internal  condition  of  any  national  com- 
munities. The  Italian  national  community  lived  only  in 
the  northern  part  of  the  peninsula,  the  British  community 
only  in  Great  Britain  and  in  north-eastern  Ireland.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  regions  where  the  intimidations  were 
practised  had  not  yet  consented  to  join  in  the  national 
communities  though  those  communities  eagerly  desired 
their  accession. 

Six  of  the  national  communities  had  hereditary  sovereigns: 
the  French  had  an  elective  President.  Neither  the  heredi- 
Dignified  tary  sovereigns  nor  the  French  President  could 
sovereigns,  perform  any  official  act  except  on  the  advice  of 
a  minister  who  could  be  punished  for  his  advice,  if  it  were 

1  F.  C.  Conybeare,  The  Dreyfus  Case,  ch.  12,  ch.  13, 


chap,  xxiv.]  SOVEEEIGNS  463 

bad.1  The  hereditary  sovereigns  were  known  to  be  power- 
less, and  were  accordingly  exempted  from  responsibility  for 
their  acts:  but  in  France  in  1875,  when  MacMahon  was 
President,  it  seems  to  have  been  thought  that  a  President 
might  seduce  a  minister  from  his  duty,  and  persuade  him  to 
run  the  risk  of  being  punished :  for  it  was  enacted  that  a 
President  could  be  accused  of  high  treason  by  the  first 
chamber,  and  be  judged  by  the  senate :  2  the  resignation  of 
President  Casimir-Perier,  on  January  15,  1895,  seems  to 
have  been  prompted  by  his  knowledge  that  a  humiliation 
which  he  had  suffered  from  a  foreign  government  might 
involve  him  in  awkward  consequences.8  The  hereditary 
sovereigns  though  personally  powerless  could  be  first-rate 
advisers  of  their  ministers,  because  they  were  acquainted 
with  all  secrets  of  state  continuously  throughout  their 
reigns :  the  ministers  knew  the  most  private  matters  only 
when  they  chanced  to  be  in  office.  In  foreign  affairs  more 
than  in  any  other  department  of  government  the  intimate 
knowledge  possessed  by  the  hereditary  sovereigns  was 
especially  valuable,  and  it  might  easily  happen  that  a 
hereditary  sovereign  was  a  better  agent  than  any  minister 
could  be  for  establishing  a  good  understanding  between  his 
own  subjects  and  some  foreign  community. 

From  1900  to  the  present  day  continental  unitary  nations 
have  continued  to  be  what  they  were  in  the  „  c 

*  #  Bodies  politic 

nineteenth  century,  except  that  the  Norwegians  of  the  twentieth 
in  1905  declared  themselves  perfectly  indepen-  century- 
dent  of  Sweden,  and  elected  a  Danish  prince   to  be  their 

'  Chacun  des  actes  du  President  de  la  Republique  doit  etre  contresigne 
par  un  ministre.'  So  runs  a  clause  in  art.  3  of  La  Loi  Constitutionuelle  du  25 
Fevrier  1875.     Dareste,  1.  9. 

a  Ibidem,  art.  6,  and  Loi  du  16  Juillet  1875,  art.  12,  in  Dareste,  1.  15. 

3  See  the  evidence  of  M.  Casimir-P^rier  given  before  La  Cour  de  Cassation, 
December  28,  1898,  and  printed  in  the  Journal  des  Dtbats  for  April  12,  1899; 
also  the  evidence  of  Risbourg  and  Lebrun-Renault,  printed  in  the  Figaro 
for  April  20,  1899, 


464  GENERAL  [chap.  xxiv. 

dignified  sovereign.  In  England  the  now  existing  body 
politic  seems  to  be  different  from  all  its  predecessors,  and 
to  have  a  different  government.  What  may  be  the  actual 
nature  of  the  body  politic  and  what  is  its  government 
cannot  as  yet  be  discerned. 

Before  we  leave  the  unitary  nations  we  may  observe  that 
five  of  them  were  descended  from  compulsory  junctions  of 
Pedigrees  of  tribes,  only  two,  somewhat  unlike  the  rest, 
bodies  politic  nameiy  France  and  Belgium,  from  compulsory 
from  com-  junctions  of  fiefs,  and  further  that  two  peoples  in 
tancttons  of  ^e  IDerian  peninsula,  Spain  and  Portugal,  both 
tribes.  descended  from  compulsory  junctions  of  tribes, 

are  making  progress  towards  becoming  unitary  nations,  and 
that  in  Germany  eight  or  ten  of  the  larger  peoples,  each 
descended  mainly  from  a  compulsory  junction  of  tribes,  were 
till  1866  making  progress  in  the  same  direction.  Hence 
we  perceive  that  compulsory  junctions  of  tribes  are  the 
principal  origin  of  unitary  nations  and  their  like,  and  it  may 
be  worth  our  while  to  take  a  general  view  of  the  pedigrees 
of  peoples  descended  from  such  junctions.  As  soon  as  we 
take  our  survey  of  the  pedigrees  we  see  that  they  are 
characterised  by  regularity,  and  by  the  occurrence  in  a  fixed 
order  of  several  successions  of  generations  of  bodies  politic 
marked  off  from  one  another  by  the  possession  of  certain 
characters  and  forms  of  government. 

Compulsory  junctions  of  tribes  were  common  in  Germany, 

Scandinavia,  and  England  in  the  Dark  Ages.     By  1066  they 

had  all  been  made  in  England  and  in  Scandinavia, 

Succession  ° 

of  types  in  the  but  in  Germany  some  may  probably  have 
pedigrees.  occurrea  between  1250  and  1273  during  the 
Great  Interregnum.  Till  1300  everywhere  and  in  Germany 
till  1400  the  characters  of  the  bodies  politic  descended  from 
the  junctions  are  scarcely  discernible.  Then  from  1300  in 
England  and  Scandinavia,  and  from  1400  in  Germany  we 


chap,  xxiv.]  COMMENTS  465 

meet  with  about  four  generations  of  bodies  politic,  ruled  by 
a  king  with  very  imperfect  representative  institutions:  in 
the  larger  countries  these  bodies  politic  were  decidedly 
composite,  in  the  small  German  principalities  much  more 
simple.  From  1474  in  Spain,  from  1485  in  England,  from 
1523  in  Sweden  we  find  bodies  politic  of  which  nearly  the 
whole  masses  are  united,  but  are  plagued  by  small  recalcit- 
rant factions  or  communities :  in  these  countries  the  large 
united  mass  sets  up  a  strong  king  to  restrain  the  disturbers. 
In  Germany  the  small  principalities  though  not  disunited 
internally  are  afraid,  from  1530,  of  aggressive  neighbours, 
and  they  like  the  larger  bodies  politic  set  up  strong  kings 
Thus  from  about  1500  we  get  in  every  one  of  our  pedigrees 
some  generations  ruled  by  a  strong  king  subject  to  little 
control  of  parliament.  Lastly  in  every  pedigree  we  come  to 
some  body  politic  which  has  finally  quelled  the  disturbers 
and  is  a  united  community.  Such  bodies  politic  appear  in 
the  different  pedigrees  at  different  dates :  but  from  the  time 
when  one  such  has  appeared,  the  rest  of  the  generations  are 
a  unitary  nation,  and  are  ruled  by  a  cabinet  and  a  repre- 
sentative assembly  elected  by  a  large  part  of  the  population 
with  the  concurrence  and  help  of  a  dignified  sovereign. 

Three  greatly  abridged  general  tables  of  bodies  politic 
descended  from  compulsory  junctions  of  tribes  and  from 
junctions  of  fiefs  may  here  be  appended. 


5o 


466 


[chap.  XXIV. 


I.  BODIES  POLITIC  DESCENDED  FROM  JUNCTIONS 
OF  MANY  TRIBES 
Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

In  Period  1,  to  1300. 
Unstable.  Unstable. 


In  Period  2,  1300-1450. 
Composite  bodies  politic. 


Sometimes  a  king  and  a  rudely 
made  parliament :  sometimes 
civil  war. 


In  Period  3,  1450  to  various 

dates. 
Composite    bodies    politic,    but     King  almost  or  entirely  despotic. 

consisting  for  the  most  part     Parliaments  if  present  very  weak. 

of  united  communities. 


In  Period  4,  from  various  dates 

to  the  present  time. 
Unitary  nations. 


II. 


Cabinet,  parliament,  and  digni- 
fied sovereign. 


BODIES  POLITIC  DESCENDED  FROM  JUNCTIONS 
OF  FEW  TRIBES  IN  GERMANY 
Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

In  Period  1,  to  1400. 
Little  known.  Little  known. 


In  Period  2,  from  1400  to  1500. 

Simple  communities   with  few     Prince  and  a  Landtag, 
external  wars. 


In  Period  3,  from  1530  to  1814. 
Simple  communities  engaged  in 
many  external  wars. 


Prince   without  a   Landtag,   or 
with  a  powerless  Landtag. 


CHAP.    XXIV.] 


467 


III.  BODIES  POLITIC  IN  FRANCE  DESCENDED  FROM 
JUNCTIONS  OF  FIEFS 

Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

In  Period  1,  from  1250  to  1477. 
King's  demesne,  fairly  united,     King  and  Parlement  de  Paris. 

having  fiefs  joined  under  it 

in  unequal  alliance. 


In  Period  2  from  1477  to  1789. 

Composite  bodies  politic  held 
together,  if  at  all,  by  armed 
force  with  or  without  bribery 
of  privileged  orders. 

In  Period  3,  1792-1795. 
Disruption  of  France. 


In  Period  4,  1795-1814. 

Body  politic  gradually  becoming 
a  single  community  by  being 
converted  into  an  army. 


In  Period  5,  1814-1900. 
Unitary  nation. 


Till  1595  sometimes  king  upheld 
by  army,  sometimes  anarchy. 

After  1661  king,  seemingly 
strong,  really  weak,  aided  by 
an  army  and  by  bribed 
privileged  orders. 

Tyrannous  demagogues. 


A  strong  military  despot. 


Usually  parliament,  cabinet  and 
dignified  sovereign  [1851- 
1870,  a  military  despot]. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

VOLUNTARY  JUNCTIONS   OF   EQUAL  COMMUNITIES 

All  the  junctions  of  bodies  politic  which  have  been  noticed 
thus  far  were  effected  by  compulsion.  Compulsory  junctions 
of  unlike  peoples  produced  the  empires  of  the  Csesars  and 
of  the  Kaisers.  Compulsory  junctions  of  like  communities 
in  the  course  of  long  ages  generated  unitary  nations.  We 
have  now  to  observe  voluntary  junctions  of  bodies  politic : 
in  the  present  chapter  Voluntary  Junctions  of  Equal 
Communities:  in  the  next  voluntary  junctions  of  unequal 
communities  or  of  unequal  bodies  politic. 

The  name  voluntary  junction  of  equal  communities 
belongs,  strictly  speaking,  only  to  an  action  by  which  equal 
Scope  of  the  communities  establish  a  common  government  to 
chapter.  which  all  of  them  promise  obedience  or  defer- 

ence. But  such  an  action  may  be  preceded  by  a  different 
action,  by  which  communities  merely  form  a  permanent 
alliance  for  their  common  defence,  without  setting  up  any 
common  government:  and  the  formation  of  a  permanent 
alliance  has  in  one  instance  led  insensibly  and  by  slow 
degrees  to  the  establishment  of  something  like  a  common 
government.  Hence  it  is  not  convenient  to  insist  on  giving 
the  word  junction  its  precise  meaning,  and  I  shall  notice  in 
the  present  chapter  the  one  permanent  alliance  which 
insensibly  led  the  allies  comprised  in  it  to  live  under  an 
exceedingly  imperfect  common  government. 

468 


chap,  xxv.]  ACHAIA  469 

Voluntary  junctions  of  equal  communities  have  occurred 
(1)  in  ancient  Achaia,  (2)  in  mediseval  Switzerland,  (3)  in 
the  Dutch  Netherlands,  (4)  in  North  America,  preiiminary 
and  (5)  in  Switzerland  in  the  middle  of  the  nine-  remarks, 
teenth  century.  Before  I  describe  these  junctions  I  wish 
to  point  out  that  in  each  of  the  five  instances  the  peoples 
that  made  the  junction  had  throughout  their  existence 
before  they  joined  together  been  precluded  by  their  situa- 
tion or  their  circumstances  from  conquering  one  another. 
The  Achaean  peoples  and  the  three  Swiss  tribes  which  in 
1291  made  a  permanent  alliance  were  separated  from  one 
another  by  most  formidable  natural  barriers.  The  Dutch 
and  the  Americans  almost  up  to  the  time  of  their  junctions 
were  subject  to  powerful  foreign  rulers  who  effectually  pre- 
vented them  from  contending  with  one  another:  and, 
though  the  larger  part  of  the  Swiss  cantons  did  in  1847, 
just  before  the  final  voluntary  junction  of  all  the  Swiss, 
engage  in  a  war  against  the  minority  and  defeated  them, 
they  did  not  dare  to  turn  their  victory  into  a  conquest, 
because  they  could  not  attempt  any  such  measure  without 
provoking  an  intervention  of  the  great  powers  of  Europe. 

Achaia  stands  geographically  related  to  the  Peloponnesus 
nearly  as  Asturias  to  Spain:  but  it  is  more  decisively 
isolated  from  the  Peloponnesus  than  its  Spanish 
analogue  from  the  bulk  of  Spain,  because  the 
range  of  Erymanthus  and  Kyllene,  which  fences  it  in,  is 
precipitous  on  the  south  as  well  as  on  the  north,  whereas 
the  range  in  Spain  which  gives  bounds  to  Asturias  is 
approached  from  the  south  by  a  very  gradual  and  almost 
imperceptible  slope,  and  is  rather  a  cliff  four  or  five 
thousand  feet  high  than  a  mountain  range.  The  area  of 
Achaia  is  cut  up  by  high  ranges  of  mountains  running 
generally  from  south  to  north  into  about  a  dozen  narrow 
valleys.     In   these  valleys  little  cantons  of  mountaineers 


470  ACHAEAN  [chap.  xxv. 

and  mariners  had  established  themselves  long  before  the 
ages  known  to  us  from  historical  records. 

The  Greeks  of  the  historical  period  believed  that  the 
Achseans  whom  they  knew  as  their  contemporaries  were 
Origin  of  the  descended  from  the  men  who  in  the  Mykensean 
Achaeans.  age  nacl  lived  at  Mykense  and  Tiryns  and  in 
Laconia.  Pausanias,  who  wrote  in  the  age  of  the  Antonine 
Csesars,  gives  us  the  story  of  the  migration  of  the  Mykenaeans 
to  Achaia  that  had  been  handed  down  by  popular  tradition  ; 1 
and  he  also  indicates  clearly  that  the  men  who  lived  in 
Mykense  till  468  B.C.  believed  that  the  men  who  then  lived 
in  Achaia  were  their  kinsmen.  He  tells  us  that,  when  the 
inhabitants  of  Mykense  were  ejected  from  their  city  in 
468  B.C.  by  the  Dorians  of  Argos,  a  good  part  of  them  went 
to  settle  at  Keryneia,  one  of  the  Achsean  cities,  and  that 
their  coming  gave  Keryneia  a  large  increase  of  population 
and  of  renown.2 

In  the  early  and  central  part  of  Greek  history  the  whole 

of  the  Achsean  cantons  acted  together.     Kroton  and  Sybaris 

in  Italy,  said  to  have  been  founded  before  700  B.C., 

The  &s.rlier 

Achsean  were  known  as  colonies  of  the  Achaeans  and  not 

League  till  0f  anv  single  Achsean  city.3  Thucydides  on  the 
few  occasions  when  he  mentions  the  Achaeans 
speaks  of  them  as  adopting  a  common  foreign  policy,  and 
thus  indicates  that  in  his  time  they  were  joined  in  some 
sort  of  league  or  confederation.  Polybius  says  expressly 
that  in  the  time  of  Philip  of  Macedonia  and  his  son  Alexander 
the  Great  they  had  a  common  government.4  They  acted 
together  far  more  harmoniously  than  the  Boeotians.  In 
Boeotia  war  between  Thebes  and  Orchomenus  occurred  more 
than  once :  among  the  Achsean  cantons  and  cities  we  hear 

1  Pausanias,  2.  18,  p.  151.  2  Pausanias,  7.  25.  6,  p.  589. 

8  Strabo,  pp.  262,  263. 

4  Polybius,  2.  41.  6,  says  they  had  a  Koivbv  iroXlrevna. 


chap,  xxv.]  LEAGUE  471 

of  no  discords.  But  after  the  death  of  Alexander  the 
Great  the  Macedonian  king  Kassander,  and  after  him  his 
two  Antigonid  successors  Demetrius  Poliorketes  and 
Antigonus  Gonatas,  interfered  in  Achaia  and  broke  the 
Achaean  cities  and  cantons  apart  from  one  another.1 

In  280  Antigonus  Gonatas  was  unable  to  attend  to  affairs 
in  Greece :  so  four  Achaean  cities   established  a  common 
government  for  the  management  of  their  foreign 
policy:   other  Achaean  cities  afterwards  joined  Achaean  con- 
them.     In  25 1  Aratus  of  Siky on,  then  only  twenty  ^jgff1 
years  of  age,  expelled  a  tyrant  from  his  native  280  b.c- 
city,  and  induced  the  Sikyonians,  though  their 
city  was  not  in  Achaia,  to  join  the  Achaean  confederation. 
In  245  he  was  chosen  strategus  of  the  federal  body,  and 
not  long  afterwards  he  brought  into  it  Corinth,  the  key  of 
the  Peloponnesus,  and   nearly  all   the  other   cities  in  the 
peninsula  except  Sparta.2 

Each  canton  and  each  city  in  the  confederation  had  a 
government  to  manage  its  internal  affairs :  and  there  was 
a  central  or  federal  government  to  regulate  those  „ 

0  J  ■  Governments 

parts  of  their  policy  which  affected  all  alike,  in  the  Achaean 
The  seat  of  the  federal  government  was  atiEgium  confederation- 
a  sea  port  on  the  Corinthian  gulf.3  The  parts  in  the 
federal  government  were  a  strategus  and  a  grammateus, 
or  secretary,  a  council  probably  in  constant  or  almost 
constant  session,  and  an  assembly  which  met  every  spring 
and  every  autumn  and  could  also  be  summoned  for  meetings 
at  other  seasons.4 

1  Polybius,  2.  41.  9  and  10. 

2  Polybius,  2.  41.  foil.,  and  Plutarch,  Aratus. 

3  Polybius,  5.  1. 

4  In  220  the  council  was  sitting  when  no  assembly  was  being  held :  for 
Philip  of  Macedonia  then  conferred  with  the  council  on  a  matter  of  foreign 
policy,  which  he  would  certainly  have  laid  before  the  assembly  if  it  had 
been  possible :  Polybius,  4.  26,  irpo<xe\66vTos  rov  £a<ri\^ws  irpbs  rty  /3ou\tj»'  h 
AlyLip.     In  224  the  assembly  met  in  spring  and  in  autumn  :  Polybius,  2.  54. 


472  ACHAEAN  [chap.  xxv. 

The  strategus  was  elected  annually  at  an  assembly  and 

entered  on  his  duties  in  May  at  the  rising  of  the  Pleiades.1 

He   was  at  first  simply   commander  in  chief: 

Achaean  afterwards  he  was  rather  minister  for  foreign 

govern-  affairs,  and  his  badge  of  office  was  a  seal.2    The 

ments.  ' 

council  contained  at  least  a  hundred  and  twenty 
members,  and  probably  enough  of  them  to  make  a  quorum 
were  in  session  all  the  year  round,  or  at  any  rate  a  good 
part  of  the  year.3  The  assembly  was  attended  by  all 
citizens  of  the  component  cantons  or  cities  who  chose  to 
present  themselves:  it  must  have  been  so  since  Polybius 
says  that  the  system  of  government  was  demokratia  with 
free  and  equal  speech : 4  but  in  truth  a  demokratia  in  a 
federation  was  nothing  like  Aristotelian  demokratia  or 
demokratia  in  a  single  city,  since  in  a  federal  assembly 
none  could  be  present  except  those  who  had  time  and 
money  to  spare.  In  the  federal  assembly  votes  were  taken 
not  by  heads  but  by  cities:  each  city  or  canton  had  only 
one  vote,  and  that  vote  was  Aye  or  No  according  as  the 
majority  of  those  present  from  the  city  or  canton  desired 
to  accept  or  to  reject  the  proposal  before  the  assembly.5 
In  the  component  cities  no  doubt  the  governments  were 
conducted  in  popular  assemblies,  which  however  had 
no  control  over  foreign  policy.  For  thirty  years,  from 
251  B.C.  to  221  B.C.,  the  Achaean  confederation  ensured 
a  large  number   of  Greek  cities  in  the  enjoyment .  of  far 

1  Polybius,  5.  1.  2  Polybius,  4.  7. 

3  In  187  B.C.  Kumencs,  king  of  Pergamum,  offered  120  talents  as  a  per- 
manent endowment  for  the  councillors :  Polybius,  23.  7  in  Dindorf,  22.  10 
in  Shuckburgh's  translation.  A  talent  would  yield  720  drachma?  in  yearly 
interest,  and  that  was  a  large  stipend  for  a  councillor  :  a  member  of  the 
Five  Hundred  at  Athens  got  about  300  drachma?.  If  the  councillors  at 
iEgium  had  been  fewer  than  120,  each  would  have  been  offered  even  more 
than  720  drachm®. 

*  Polybius,  2.  38.  5  and  6. 
\  *  Jivy,  32,  22, 


chap,  xxv.]  LEAGUE  473 

better  and  more  orderly  government  than  any  Greek 
cities  had  known  in  the  days  when  each  city  was  entirely 
independent. 

From  227  to  221  the  Achaean  confederation  was  at  war 
against  Kleomenes,  King  of  Sparta ;  as  the  war  went 
decidedly  in  favour  of  Kleomenes,  Aratus  as  Decline  and 
strategus  of  the  confederation  in  223  persuaded  destruction 
the  federal  assembly  to  ask  aid  of  Antigonus  Achaean  con- 
D6son  who  was  ruling  Macedonia  as  regent  for  federation, 
his  young  nephew  Philip.1  The  aid  was  given  and 
Kleomenes  was  decisively  defeated  in  221  at  Sellasia  in  the 
north  of  Laconia:  but  from  that  time  the  Achaean  con- 
federation was  dependent  first  on  kings  of  Macedonia  and 
afterwards  on  the  Roman  Republic.  In  146  B.C.  the 
Achaean  territory  was  overrun  by  a  Roman  army:  from 
that  time  its  inhabitants  were  controlled  by  some  Roman 
magistrates,  probably  by  the  governors  of  Macedonia :  from 
the  time  of  Julius  Caesar  Achaia  was  a  Roman  province 
under  a  proconsul  whose  sole  duty  was  to  govern  it.2 

In  the  heart  of  the  Alps  three  German  tribal  communities 
in  Uri,  Schwyz,  and  Unterwalden  were  still  governed  in  the 
thirteenth  century  by  assemblies  not  differing  in  (2)  Mediaeval 
any  particular  except  that  they  had  no  kings  from  Switzeriand. 
those  folkmoots  of  their  ancestors  which  Tacitus  described. 
They  were  separated  from  one  another  by  mountain  barriers  : 
between  Uri  and  Unterwalden  the  lowest  pass,  the  Surenen, 
is  more  than  seven  thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  Near  them 
in  the  lower  grounds  were  many  princes  who  might  try  to 
oppress  them  :  but  they  enjoyed  favour  and  protection  from 
Rudolf  of  Habsburg  the  German  Kaiser.  In  1291,  shortly 
after  Rudolfs  death,  they  formed  an  alliance  for  three  years 

1  Polybius,  Book  2. 

s  See  Smith,  Diet.  Geogr.,  article  on  Achaia;  also  Marquardt,  Staatsmc,, 
1.  171,  in  edition  of  1873. 


474  LEAGUE  [chap.  xxv. 

which  became  permanent:1  in  1315  they  won  a  splendid 
victory  at  Morgarten,  near  Schwyz,  over  an  Austrian  prince, 
and  thereupon  they  concluded  a  new  alliance  in  which  they 
called  themselves  Eidgenossen,  or  sworn  comrades.  Between 
1332  and  1353  they  admitted  into  their  alliance  five  more 
towns  or  tribes,  Luzern,  Zurich,  Glarus,  Zug,  and  the  city  of 
Bern,  a  component  member  in  the  German  Reich  or  Kaiser- 
thum.  In  1370  it  chanced  that  an  unruly  priest,  Provost  of 
the  Great  Minster  at  Zurich,  quarrelled  on  private  grounds 
with  the  Schultheiss,  the  chief  magistrate  at  Luzern,  fell 
upon  him  with  armed  force,  and  took  him  prisoner.  There- 
upon six  of  the  eight  members  of  the  Swiss  League  altered 
the  terms  of  their  alliance  by  concluding  a  compact  called 
Pfaffenbrief,  or  Declaration  concerning  Priests,  in  which  they 
resolved  to  suppress  and  punish  all  private  wars  waged  by 
any  man  in  their  Eidgenossenschaft,  or  sworn  comradeship.2 
Again  after  they  had  in  1386  won  their  great  victory  at 
Sempach  over  Duke  Leopold  of  Austria  and  his  nobles,  they 
varied  the  terms  of  their  alliance  in  their  Sempacherbrief, 
which  was  to  regulate  their  mutual  obligations  in  time  of 
war.3  In  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  Bern  was  so 
much  the  strongest  of  the  allies  of  the  eight  cantons  that 
in  1474  Louis  the  Eleventh  of  France  who  eagerly  desired 
an  alliance  with  the  valiant  Swiss,  as  soon  as  he  had  got  the 
adhesion  of  the  Bernese,  did  not  care  to  get  precise  agree- 
ments with  the  other  cantons,  knowing  they  would  follow 
the  lead  of  Bern:4  but  every  town  and  canton  was  in- 
dependent and  conducted  its  own  foreign  policy  through  the 
agency  of  ambassadors  bound  by  instructions  from  their 
fellow  townsmen  or  fellow  tribesmen.  Till  1481  the  eight 
cantons  were  merely  joined  in  a  permanent  alliance,  and  up 

1  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch  zur  Schweizergeschichte,  pp.  50,  51. 

2  Erzinger,  Schweizer  Katechismus,  23  ;  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch,  99-102. 

3  Quellenbuch,  110. 

4  B.  de  Mandrot  in  Jahrbuch  fur  Schweizergeschichte,  vol.  5,  170-182. 


chap,  xxv.]  OF  THE  SWISS  475 

to  that  time  nothing  that  I  have  noticed  in  their  records 
indicates  that  they  had  anything  at  all  of  common 
government. 

But  from  1481  some  germs  of  what  might  grow  into  a 
common  government  began  to  appear,  and  it  seems  that  they 
sprouted  up  spontaneously  without  any  deliberate 

,     .  ,  P    ,  -j  ,     .       Beginnings 

design  on  the  part  ot  the  cantons  to  induce  their  Cf  common 
appearance.  In  1481  some  of  the  ambassadors  government, 
to  avoid  war  between  the  tribal  cantons  in  the 
mountains  and  the  urban  cantons  in  the  lower  ground  broke 
their  instructions,  and  permitted  the  majority  of  the 
ambassadors  to  settle  the  policy  of  the  whole  body  of  the 
allies.  Thus  the  ambassadors  became  for  the  moment  not 
the  servants  but  the  masters  of  the  cantonal  governments, 
and  for  the  moment  something  like  a  common  government 
was  set  up.1  In  1489  the  ambassadors  of  the  eight  cantons 
were  an  itinerant  body.  Whether  they  all  remained  together 
during  their  peregrinations  I  cannot  say :  but  certainly  in 
March  1489  some  of  them  were  first  at  Zurich,  then  at  Schwyz, 
and  by  the  beginning  of  April  they  were  back  at  Zurich.  Both 
in  March  and  April  they  made  use  of  their  sacrosanct  character 
of  ambassadors  to  try  to  allay  a  revolt  made  by  the  towns- 
men of  Zurich  and  their  dependent  country-folk  against  an 
oppressive  Btirgermeister,  Hans  Waldmann,  thereby  inter- 
vening in  the  domestic  affairs  of  a  canton  where  they  were 
present.2  In  the  last  years  of  the  fifteenth  century  and  the 
early  years  of  the  sixteenth  the  Swiss  mountaineers  were  by 
far  the  strongest  fighters  in  continental  Europe,  and  a  meeting 
of  the  ambassadors  of  the  cantons  could  deal  on  equal  terms 
with  the  most  powerful  sovereigns  in  the  world.  In  1512  in 
two  meetings  on  August  11  and   September  6   they  held 

1  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch  zur  Schweizergeschichte,  an  excellent  selection   of 
authorities,  199-206. 

2  Ibid.,  211-218. 


476  SWISS  LEAGUE  [chap.  xxv. 

thirteen  interviews  with  ambassadors  from  rulers  outside 
Switzerland,  two  of  these  being  Maximilian  King  of  the 
Romans,  and  Ferdinand  King  of  Spain.  By  a  fiction  it  might 
be  said  that  they  were  acting  under  instructions  from  their 
cantonal  governments:  but  in  truth  the  negotiations  that 
they  had  to  conduct  with  foreign  powers  were  so  many  and 
so  intricate  that  they  could  not  act  except  under  the  guidance 
of  their  own  common  sense.1 

But  between  1512  and  1540  the  influence  of  the  Swiss 
ambassadors  in  the  councils  of  Europe  and  their  authority 
Decline  and  over  tne  cantons  were  both  broken.  As  the 
disruption  of    natives  of  many  European  countries  learned  skill 

the  Swiss  i        •        i  •  ,  1        *  1    • 

cantons,  and  gamed  prowess  m  war  the  Alpine  mountain- 

1512-1540.  eers  Were  no  longer  invincible.  In  1515  the  great 
defeat  which  they  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Francis  the  First 
of  France  at  Marignano  lowered  their  reputation  and  their 
confidence.  Thenceforward  they  were  unable  to  settle  the 
issue  of  European  wars  at  their  pleasure  :  in  1516  they  made 
peace  with  Francis,  and  in  1521  all  the  cantons  except 
Zurich  concluded  an  alliance  with  him  which  enabled  him 
and  his  successors  for  many  generations  to  keep  six  thousand 
Swiss  mercenaries  in  the  service  of  France.2  Between  1524 
and  1540  the  cantons  were  divided  by  differences  about 
theologies  and  churches  into  hostile  factions,  and  from  then 
till  1798  they  scarcely  possessed  anything  that  bore  a 
resemblance  to  a  common  government. 

About  the  Dutch  provinces  between  1579  s  and  1794  I  can 
say  but  little.  Trustworthy  information  is  scarcely  to  be 
gained  about  them  except  from  old  writers  like  Peter  Bor 
whose  eight  huge  folio  volumes  in  the  Dutch  language  I  have 
not  read,  and  from  one  masterly  paper  by  the  Lord  Chester- 


1  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch  zur  Schweizergeschichte,  261-266. 

2  Ibid.,  278-281.  3  See  page  421. 


chap,  xxv.]  DUTCH  PROVINCES  477 

field  whose  Letters  to  his  Son  are  well  known.1     It  may  how- 
ever be  asserted  with  confidence  that  the  Dutch  provinces 
never  formed  a  firmly  jointed  federation,  but  that 
when  in  1814  the  Dutch  of  that  day  emerged  as  a   Dutch 
united  community  they  came  readily  under  a  federation 

ever  existed* 

single  supreme  government,  and  since  that  time 
the  Dutch  nation  has  been  not  federal  but  unitary. 

The  Union  of  Utrecht  made  in  1579  was  rather  an 
alliance  of  Holland,  Zealand,  Utrecht,  Gelderland  and 
Zutfen,  and  the  Frisians  between  the  Ems  river  4.    „  :  , 

'  j  The  Dutch 

and  the  Zuider  Zee  than  a  confederation.  The  provinces, 
contracting  parties  call  themselves  Bondesgenoten,  IS79"1609- 
which  means,  I  believe,  only  allies  bound  in  a  league,  and 
I  cannot  find  in  the  whole  treaty  of  union  any  mention  of 
a  central  government  capable  of  making  a  new  law  or 
imposing  a  new  tax  without  the  consent  of  the  governments 
of  the  several  provinces.2  In  1600  on  the  other  hand,  when 
Groningen,  one  of  the  Frisian  provinces,  was  forcibly  com- 
pelled by  the  other  Dutch  provinces  to  pay  its  quota  of  the 
taxes,  there  was  evidently  some  sort  of  central  government 
with  coercive  power,  and  the  provinces  may  be  regarded  as 
joined  in  a  confederation.3  It  is  my  impression  that  from 
1600  to  1609,  when  the  Dutch  made  their  Great  Truce  with 
Spain,  the  junction  of  the  Dutch  provinces  was  more  like  a 
confederation  and  less  like  a  mere  alliance,4  than  at  any 
point  in  the  subsequent  sixty  years. 

1  Some  Account  of  the  Government  of  the  Republic  of  the  Seven  United 
Provinces,  appended  to  the  Letters  of  Lord  Chesterfield  to  his  Son. 

-  Text  of  the  Union  of  Utrecht  in  Bor,  Bk.  13,  p.  26  of  vol.  3  in  the 
edition  of  1679-1680.     Abstract  in  Student's  Motley,  p.  585  and  foil. 

3  The  Student's  Motley,  published  by  Harper  and  Brothers,  London  and 
New  York,  1898,  pp.  744,  745.  The  Student's  Motley  is  far  less  rhetorical 
than  Motley's  own  work,  and  seems  much  more  trustworthy. 

*  Just  after  writing  the  above  sentence  I  was  pleased  to  see  that  it  was 
supported  in  some  degree  at  least  by  the  weighty  opinion  of  Heeren, 
European  States  and  Colonies,  p.  72. 


478  DUTCH  [chap.  xxv. 

In  the  nine  years  from  1600  to  1609  there  was  in  the 
central  government  an  assembly  called  the  states  general, 

a  council  of  state,  and  a  single  high  officer  called 
governments,  Stadholder.    The  members  of  the  states  general 

were  elected  in  the  provinces :  but  whether  they 
were  elected  by  the  governments  of  the  provinces,  or  by  the 
governments  of  towns  in  the  provinces,  I  do  not  know.  The 
council  of  state  contained  eighteen  or  twenty  members. 
Motley  says  that  they  were  chosen  from  the  various  states 
of  the  republic,  and  that  they  represented  not  their 
particular  states  but  the  whole  country.1  From  what  he 
says  I  cannot  conjecture  who  were  their  electors,  but 
conclude  that  the  councillors  were  men  of  some  skill  and 
experience,  and  that  their  business  was  to  consider  the 
collective  interests  of  the  seven  provinces.  The  Stadholder 
was  commander  in  war.  The  states  general  was  a  legislative 
body,  but  must  not  trespass  on  the  rights  of  the  provincial 
governments,  and  therefore  had  little  power.  Under  the 
Union  of  Utrecht  no  war  could  be  declared,  and  no  treaty 
could  be  concluded  without  the  assent  of  the  states  general, 
and  the  separate  and  explicit  assent  of  every  one  of  the 
provinces:  in  1600  when  there  was  a  council  of  state  the 
assent  of  that  council  was  required  in  addition. 

During  the  seventeenth  century  there  was  a  Stadholder 
either  of  the  Dutch  provinces  or  of  the  important  province 
Th  D  t  h  °^  Holland  at  all  times  except  twenty  two  years 
provinces,  of  the  infancy,  boyhood  and  youth  of  William 
1609-1713.  the  Tnird.  The  Stadholders  derived  most  of 
their  power  from  their  offices  of  captain  general  and  admiral 
general  of  the  seven  provinces  :  the  great  statesman  William 
the  Third  was  not  only  captain  and  admiral,  but  also  chief 
adviser  on  foreign  policy,  and  under  him  the  provinces  were 
more  nearly  united  than  at  any  time  before  the  nineteenth 

1  Student'*  Motley,  p.  746. 


chap,  xxv.]  GOVERNMENTS  479 

century.  But  even  William,  when  he  longed  in  1688  to  go 
to  deliver  England  from  its  mischievous  ruler  James  the 
Second,  and  from  the  influence  of  its  resolute  enemy  Louis 
the  Fourteenth,  was  for  a  time  hindered  by  the  opposition 
of  the  single  large  city  of  Amsterdam.1  After  the  death  of 
William  it  was  impossible  for  Marlborough,  whom  the  Dutch 
chose  as  their  captain,  to  do  his  work  expeditiously  because 
the  states  general  or  their  deputies  who  accompanied  their 
armies  forbade  him  to  attempt  enterprises  necessary  for  the 
conclusion  of  the  war.2 

After  the  death  of  William  the  Third  there  was  no 
Stadholder  for  forty  five  years.  Lord  Chesterfield,  writing 
from  experience  gained  in  the  Dutch  Nether-  xne  Dutch, 
lands  between  1730  and  1747,  says  that  the  true  "713-1814. 
rulers  of  the  Dutch  were  not  the  states  general  but  the 
vroodschaps,  or  co-opted  governments  of  the  Dutch  towns. 
The  vroodschaps  chose  the  deputies  who  made  up  the  states 
general :  but  those  deputies  could  do  nothing  important  in 
foreign  policy  without  getting  the  assent  of  every  province, 
and  no  province  could  give  its  assent  till  it  had  obtained 
leave  from  the  vroodschaps  of  all  its  towns.  The  right  of 
the  provinces  to  restrain  the  states  general,  and  of  the 
towns  to  restrain  the  provinces,  was  so  absurd  that  in 
practice  it  was  sometimes  neglected :  but  the  neglect  of  it 
was  '  absolutely  unconstitutional.'3  In  1747  the  Dutch  took 
a  new  Stadholder  of  the  family  to  which  their  two  great 
Williams  had  belonged.  In  1794  the  Dutch  territory  was 
conquered  by  generals  of  the  French  Republic.  Under  the 
hard  pressure  of  French  rule  the  provinces  were  squeezed 
together  into  one  community,  and  that  community  in  1814 
became  the  founder  of  the  Dutch  unitary  nation. 

1  Macaulay,  History,  chap.  9,  tenth  heading  in  the  table  of  the  contents 
of  the  chapter. 
*  Stanhope,  Queen  Anne,  and  Coxe,  Memoirs  of  Marlborough,  passim. 
3  Chesterfield,  Letters,  etc.,  ed.  of  1774,  vol.  4,  290  n. 


480  NORTH  AMERICAN  [cha*.  xxV. 

In   North  America   the  English  had    thirteen  colonies. 

Eleven  were  of  English  foundation:   one  was  founded  by 

the  Dutch  as  New  Amsterdam,  another  by  the 

America.         Swedes,  but  in  1664   they  were   taken   by  the 

The  English    English,  were  renamed  New  York  and  Delaware, 

colonies.  ° 

and  afterwards  were  gradually  Anglicised.  In 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  each  colonial  com- 
munity had  a  representative  assembly,  and  a  governor 
appointed  by  the  King  of  England :  the  communities 
through  their  representative  assemblies  granted  taxes  to 
their  governors,  and  managed  most  of  their  internal  affairs. 
They  were  not  taxed  by  the  Parliament  at  Westminster. 
In  1765  the  Westminster  Parliament,  on  the  proposal  of 
George  Grenville,  made  a  first  attempt  to  tax  the  colonists 
by  requiring  them  to  pay  for  stamps  on  contracts:  in  1766 
however  Grenville's  Stamp  Act  was  repealed  at  the 
instance  of  a  new  body  of  ministers  in  England  of  whom 
Lord  Rockingham  was  the  head.  But  in  1767  yet  another 
body  of  ministers  was  in  office,  and  one  of  them,  Charles 
Townshend,  induced  the  Parliament  to  pass  an  act  requiring 
the  colonists  to  pay  import  duties  on  tea  and  a  few  other 
commodities. 

From  1768  onwards  the  colonists  resisted  the  attempts 
of  the  English  revenue  officers  to  collect  the  import  duties. 
The  representative  assemblies  used  bold  language 
Continental  and  most  of  them  were  dismissed  by  the 
Congress,  governors.  The  colonists  having  now  no  re- 
cognised representatives  acted  spontaneously 
and  informally :  in  1774  the  inhabitants  of  every  colony 
except  Georgia  sent  delegates  to  a  congress  to  deliberate 
about  their  common  interests.  The  congress  was  called 
Continental,  as  being  an  agent  for  all  the  North  American 
continent.  It  met  at  Philadelphia,  and  after  attending  to 
matters  of  urgent  but  temporary  importance,  it  agreed  that 


chap,  xxv.]  COLONIES  481 

a  second   congress  should   meet   next  year,  and   then  its 
members  dispersed.1 

In  1775  a  second  continental  congress  met  like  the  first 
at  Philadelphia.  In  May  1776  it  advised  the  colonies  to 
form  new  governments  of  their  own,  and  its  advice 
was  followed.  On  July  4  it  announced  that  the  'States,' 
colonies  deemed  themselves  independent,  and  I776' 
thereby  it  declared  war  against  Great  Britain.2  In  con- 
sequence of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  the  American 
communities  renounced  the  name  of  colonies  and  called 
themselves  states.  The  second  continental  congress  in 
1775  and  1776  must  have  been,  like  the  first  continental 
congress,  an  informally  constituted  body,  since  the  colonies 
had  not  yet  established  governments.  Afterwards  new 
governments  were  made,  and  delegates  to  the  congress 
received  authority  from  them  to  sit  in  congress:  till  1781 
the  delegates  continued  their  sessions  and  their  efforts  to 
promote  the  interests  of  the  thirteen  communities. 

In  1777  the  congress  drew  up  a  scheme  under  which  it 
proposed  that  the  governments  of  the  thirteen  communities 
should  join  together  in  setting  up  a  permanent 
government   to  manage  some  of  their  common   Confedera- 
affairs.      The    scheme,   called    the    Articles    of  faon' 
Confederation,3  set  up  a  permanent  congress  consisting  of 
delegates  from  the  thirteen  states,  appointed  in  such  manner 
as   the  legislature  of  each   state   should   direct.      In    the 
permanent  congress  each  state  was  to  have  one  vote.4     The 
permanent  congress  could  not  command  any  single  citizen 
in  any  particular.     It  could  deal  with  foreign  states,  and  it 
could  ask  the  governments  of  the  thirteen  states  to  grant 

1  Alexander  Johnston,  History  of  the  United  States,  publ.  Holt,  New  York, 
1890,  pp.  86-90. 

2  Ibid.,  pip.  97-104. 

3  Printed  in  Bryce,  American  Commonwealth,  1.  690-696. 

4  Art.  Confed.,  Art.  5. 

2n 


482  LOOSE  [chap.  xxv. 

it  money  and  men :  but  in  case  any  state  neglected  a  request 
it  had  no  means  of  compelling  compliance,  since  it  had  no 
authority  for  commanding  single  citizens  and  no  resources 
for  beginning  a  war  against  recalcitrant  states.  Acceptance 
of  the  scheme  was  to  be  signified  for  each  state  by  the 
delegates  of  that  state  in  the  continental  congress  acting  as 
plenipotentiaries  for  the  legislature  of  their  state,  and  the 
scheme  was  not  to  be  in  force  till  the  legislatures  of  all  the 
thirteen  states  had  through  their  delegates  signified  their 
acceptance  of  it.  Four  years  passed  in  disputes  among 
some  of  the  states  about  their  western  boundaries :  at  last 
on  March  1,  1781,  the  scheme  had  been  accepted  by  the 
delegates  of  all  the  thirteen  states.1 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  confederation  made  in  1781  was 
only  an  attempt   to  join  governments,  not  to  join  com- 
munities:    and    the    attempted    junction    was 

Ineffectual  ._    n    .  , 

character  of  ratified  by  governments,  not  by  communities, 
the  confeder-   fhe  compact  made  in  1781  was  an  attempt  to 

ation.  .  r  r 

join  governments,  not  communities,  because 
though  the  thirteen  governments  agreed  that  they  would 
in  certain  matters  be  controlled  by  a  fourteenth  government, 
namely  the  permanent  congress,  which  they  set  up,  they  did 
not  agree  that  any  single  citizen  should  in  any  particular 
be  controlled  by  the  permanent  congress:  thus  after  the 
compact  was  made  every  citizen  was  a  subject  only  of  his 
own  state  and  was  not  subject  to  the  congress.  And  the 
parties  to  the  compact  were  not  communities  but  the 
ordinary  legislatures  of  the  communities  acting  through 
their  delegates.  The  distinction  that  I  have  just  made 
between  ratification  by  communities  and  ratification  by 
their  ordinary  legislatures  seemed  to  me,  when  first  it 
occurred  to  me,  to  be  open  to  the  charge  of  being  trivial  and 

1  A.  Johnston,  Hist.,  137,  Art.  271.      Cambridge  Modern   Hist.,  7.   235. 
Bryce,  Am.  Com.,  1.  696. 


chap,  xxv.]  CONFEDERATION  483 

pedantic,  because  treaties  of  alliance  that  relate  only  to 
foreign  policy  are  always  made  either  by  executive  govern- 
ments or  by  legislatures  without  the  express  sanction  of 
individual  members  of  the  community,  and  yet  they  are 
perfectly  valid.  But  I  believe  the  distinction  is  of  some 
importance,  because  we  shall  see  shortly  that  the  only 
strong  federations  that  have  ever  been  made  were  ratified 
not  by  ordinary  legislatures  but  by  the  express  and  explicit 
approval  of  the  greater  part  of  the  members  of  the  contract- 
ing communities. 

After  the  war  of  the  Americans  against  Great  Britain  was 
ended  in  1783,  the  communities  in  America  fell  into  discord. 
Those  states  which  had  good  harbours  would  not  convention 
let  their  neighbours  make  use  of  the  harbours  till  to  revise  the 
they  had  paid  large  dues  on  the  commodities  that  confedera- 
they  desired  to  send  across  the  sea.1  Danger  of  tlon- 
foreign  war  was  not  permanently  removed,  since  Great 
Britain  still  owned  Canada,  and  Spain  had  a  right,  which 
however  was  for  the  present  dormant,  to  rule  the  huge 
territory  called  Louisiana  from  the  Mississippi  westward 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains.2  Congress  could  do  nothing  to 
mitigate  discord  or  provide  against  danger.  It  could  ask 
the  states  with  good  harbours  to  be  kind  to  their  neighbours, 
and  could  ask  all  the  states  to  furnish  money  and  men  for 
the  common  defence  :  but  when  its  requests  were  disregarded, 
it  could  do  no  more.  The  American  communities  were  not 
one  body  politic  but  thirteen  separate  communities.  Each 
community  had  its  own  government  which  did  what  it 
chose :  congress,  which  had  been  intended  to  be  a  common 
government,  could  govern  no  longer  and  could  not  be 
counted  as  a  government.  As  early  as  1782  a  desire  was 
expressed  by  the  legislature  of  New  York  that  congress 

1  Cambridge  Mod.  Hist.,  7.  243. 

2  Bryce,  Am.  Com.,  1.  27. 


484  CLOSEK  UNION  [chap.  xxv. 

might  be  enabled  to  provide  a  revenue  for  itself.1  In  1787 
the  legislatures  of  twelve  states  sent  delegates  to  a  conven- 
tion at  Philadelphia,  which  was  entrusted  with  the  task 
of  revising  the  Articles  drawn  up  ten  years  earlier.2 

The  delegates  in   the  convention   evidently  thought  the 

Articles  of  Confederation  too  defective  to  admit  of  being 

patched  with    any   good    result:    for    at    their 

of  the  first  meeting  they  allowed  Edmond  Randolph  of 

American        Virginia  to   expound  to   them   his  draft  for  a 

Constitution.  °  r  ^ 

totally  new  compact  between  the  thirteen  states  ; 
they  took  his  draft  and  not  the  old  Articles  as  the  basis  of 
their  discussions,  and  at  one  of  their  earlier  meetings,  when 
a  delegate  from  Virginia  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  old 
confederation  had  been  dissolved  by  the  appointment  of  the 
delegates  to  the  convention,  no  one  contradicted  him.3  The 
debates  of  the  delegates  eventually  showed  that  all  of  them 
except  perhaps  two  or  three  were  resolved  to  propose  the 
establishment  of  a  new  central  government  endowed  with 
authority  to  issue  commands  on  certain  defined  matters  to 
individual  citizens  and  to  compel  obedience  to  those  com- 
mands: and  before  the  debates  ended  it  was  decided  that 
ratification  of  the  proposed  compact  should  be  signified  for 
any  state  not  by  the  ordinary  legislature  of  the  state,  but  by 
a  convention  elected  by  the  inhabitants  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  deciding  whether  the  state  would  enter  into  the  new 
compact  or  would  decline :  and  that,  when  nine  states  had 
ratified  the  compact,  the  compact  should  be  binding  on  those 
states.*  The  compact  was  called  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States :  and  its  chief  features  were  a  central  govern- 
ment with  some  power  to  compel,  and  ratification  by  con- 
ventions certain  to  express  the  wishes  of  the  communities. 

1  Cambridge  Mod.  Hist.,  7.  244. 

2  Bryce,  1.  20-28. 

■  Madison,  Constitutional  Convention,  1.  73. 

4  Constitution  Art.  7,  printed  in  Bryce,  Am,  Com.,  1.  705. 


chap,  xxv.]  DESIRED  485 

The  compact  was  to  make  a  junction  of  communities  and  it 
was  to  be  made  by  communities.  By  the  year  1789  the 
Constitution  had  been  ratified  by  conventions  in  all  the 
thirteen  states. 

In  their  draft  of  the  new  compact  or  constitution  the 
delegates  described  its  parts  with  admirable  precision  and 
neatness:   and  they  arranged  the  parts  in  that   Draft 
order  which  would  be  most  intelligible   to  the  American 

i-i  Constitution. 

Americans  generally  and  would  be  most  likely  to  Heads  of 
disarm  opposition.  They  explained  the  structure  descnp11011- 
of  the  main  organs  of  the  government  before  they  defined 
the  functions  of  the  organs.  That  order  of  exposition  was 
the  best  for  its  purpose :  but,  since  many  ideas  about 
governments  which  were  then  novel  are  now  familiar,  I 
do  not  feel  bound  to  follow  it.  In  making  a  sketch  of 
the  American  Constitution  I  shall  describe  first  the  extent 
of  the  powers  conceded  to  the  central  government,  and  shall 
thence  deduce  the  powers  retained  by  the  governments  of 
the  contracting  states :  secondly,  I  shall  notice  the  structure 
of  the  central  government,  and  thirdly,  I  shall  explain  the 
provisions  made  for  future  modifications  of  the  contract 
between  the  states. 

The    act    done    by  a  number    of    communities    which 
voluntarily  join  together  consists  in   the  establishment  of 
a  common  government  to  manage  some  part  of 
their  affairs.    The  character  of  the  act  depends   powers  of 
both  on  the  extent  of  the  powers  conceded  to  the   the  central 

government. 

common  government  and  on  the  structure  of  that 
government,  but  I  think  most  of  all  on  the  extent  of  the 
powers  given  to  it,  which  extent  in  its  turn  determines 
the  amount  of  the  residue  of  powers  retained  by  the 
communities  in  their  own  possession.  In  the  central 
government  set  up  by  the  American  communities  there 
were  three  organs,  legislative,  executive  and  judicial.     The 


486  CLOSER  UNION  [chap.  xxv. 

central  legislature  in  two  chambers  had  power  to  lay  taxes, 
to  borrow  money,  to  regulate  external  commerce,  to  provide 
rules  respecting  naturalisation  and  bankruptcy,  to  coin 
money,  to  fix  standards  of  weights  and  measures,  to  establish 
post  offices  and  post  roads,  to  regulate  copyright  and  patents, 
to  define  and  punish  piracy,  declare  war,  raise  and  main- 
tain armies  and  a  navy,  to  call  upon  the  militia  of  the 
separate  states  to  execute  the  laws  enacted  in  the  central 
legislature,  and  to  be  the  sole  legislature  for  the  district  ten 
miles  square  in  which  it  held  its  sessions.  The  central 
executive  officer,  called  President,  was  to  see  that  the  laws 
made  by  the  central  legislature  were  obeyed,  and  was  com- 
mander of  the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States,  and  of 
the  militia  of  the  several  states  when  called  into  the  actual 
service  of  the  United  States:  with  the  assent  of  the  upper 
chamber  of  the  central  legislature  he  made  treaties  and 
appointed  all  functionaries  of  the  United  States,  among 
whom  judges  in  the  central  judicature  were  included.  The 
central  judicature,  called  Supreme  Court,  decided  on  appeal, 
(1)  all  cases  arising  under  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  or  under  laws  made  by  the  central  legislature,  or 
under  treaties,  (2)  controversies  to  which  the  United  States 
was  a  party,  and  (3)  disputes  between  citizens  of  different 
states.  In  all  cases  affecting  ambassadors,  other  public 
ministers  and  consuls,  and  in  those  in  which  a  state  was  a 
party,  it  had  original  and  therefore  sole  jurisdiction.1 

The  powers  retained  by  the  single  states  to  be  exercised 
by  their  own  governments  were  far  more  numerous  than 
Draft .  those  that  they  gave  away  to  the  central  govern- 

Powers  of      ment,  but  the    greater  part   of  them   can   be 

the  govern-       .       .  . 

mentsof  indicated  under  a  few  comprehensive  titles, 
single  states.  The  single  states  made  and  executed  their  own 
laws  about  property  except  those  touching  bankruptcy,  their 

1  All  this  from  the  Constitution,  Articles  I.,  n.,  ill. 


chap,  xxv.]  PROPOSED  487 

own  laws  about  crime  except  piracy  and  treason  to  the 
United  States,  and  their  own  laws  about  marriage.  They 
maintained  order  by  forces  of  police.  They  set  up  local 
and  municipal  governments,  and  could  require  sanitary 
precautions  and  regulate  education  and  medical  diplomas. 
They  gave  charters  to  commercial  associations :  and  finally 
they  chose  their  own  constitutions  subject  to  the  single 
condition  that  they  could  not  set  up  a  king.  An  American 
citizen  was  touched  by  the  law  of  his  own  state  in  every 
circumstance  of  his  daily  life :  it  was  only  occasionally  that 
he  was  touched  by  the  law  of  the  United  States.  But  the 
occasions  on  which  federal  law  came  in  were  important:  and 
the  federal  law  affected  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  thirteen 
states,  whereas  the  law  of  Virginia  or  of  Pennsylvania  could 
only  touch  a  Virginian  or  a  Pennsylvanian. 

In  regard  to  the  structure  of  the  central  government  the 
debates  of  the  delegates  consisted  very  properly  in  a  process 
of  bargaining  in  which  the  delegates  of  each  state   Draft . 
sought  to  protect  the  interests  of  their  own  state,   structure 
The  interest  of  every  state  demanded  that  the   government: 
central  government  should  be  strong  enough  to  ^terests  and 

&  .  .  principles 

ensure  the  confederated  states  against  foreign  to  be 
enemies.  The  larger  states  Virginia,  Pennsylvania  consldered- 
and  Massachussetts  had  nothing  to  lose  by  making  the 
central  government  strong,  because  they  were  confident  that 
in  the  central  government  their  own  citizens  would  have  a 
large  share  of  power.  The  smaller  states,  as  New  Jersey  and 
Georgia,  feared  lest  a  strong  central  government  might  bear 
hardly  on  them.  But  the  course  of  the  debates  was  by  no 
means  all  bargaining :  it  was  largely  influenced  by  theories 
of  what  government  ought  to  be,  derived  from  the  experience 
of  the  American  colonies  and  from  observation  of  govern- 
ment in  Great  Britain,  and  especially  by  a  doctrine  or  axiom 
which  the  disciples  of  Montesquieu  had  invented.     Montes- 


488  CLOSER  UNION  [chap.  xxv. 

quieu,  making  his  observations  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  saw  that  England  was  far  better  governed 
than  any  other  large  country,  and  that  in  England  the 
legislative  and  judicial  branches  of  government  were  not  so 
entirely  dependent  on  the  executive  as  they  were  in  France, 
Spain  and  Prussia.  Hence  arose  a  dogma  that  the  legislative, 
the  executive,  and  the  judicial  organs  of  government  ought 
to  be  independent  of  one  another.  The  dogma,  as  current 
in  the  time  of  the  convention,  was  only  a  universal  pro- 
position derived  from  incorrect1  observation  of  a  single 
community,  but  it  had  great  influence  over  the  decisions  of 
the  delegates. 

In   constructing   the  central  government   the  delegates 

considered  the  need  felt   by  all   the  states  of  a  common 

government  strong  enough  to  make  all  secure 

structure        against  foreign  enemies,  the  desire  of  the  smaller 

of  central        states  not  to  be  overwhelmed,  and  the   dogma 

government. 

about  the  independence  of  organs.  The  upper 
house  of  the  legislature,  called  the  Senate,  was  constructed 
so  as  to  induce  the  smaller  states  to  consent  to  the  new 
compact  of  confederation :  its  members  were  elected  by  the 
legislatures  of  the  states,  and  every  state,  whether  large  or 
small,  had  two  senators :  the  tenure  of  the  senators  was  long, 
only  one  third  of  them  vacated  their  seats  at  any  one  time, 
and  the  Senate  never  ceased  to  exist:  no  state  could  be 
deprived  without  its  consent  of  its  right  to  two  senators. 
The  lower  house  of  legislature  must  be  elected  by  all  the 
citizens,  since  it  was  to  take  part  in  making  laws  binding  on 
every  citizen:  every  state  elected,  by  such  process  as  it 
thought  fit,  members  of  the  lower  house  in  proportion  to  the 
numbers  of  its  population,  one  slave  counting  for  three  fifths 

1  During  the  debates  of  the  delegates  James  Madison  pointed  out  that  in 
England  the  organs  of  government  were  not  independent. — Madison,  Const. 
Conv.,  1.  92. 


chap,  xxv.]  PROPOSED  489 

of  a  free  man :  members  were  elected  for  two  years  only,  and 
all  vacated  their  seats  at  the  same  time.  The  executive  was 
a  single  man,  called  President,  elected  for  four  years:  for 
his  election  each  state  appointed,  in  such  manner  as  its 
legislature  might  direct,  electors  equal  in  number  to  the 
senators  and  representatives  to  which  the  state  was  entitled 
in  the  two  houses  of  the  legislature :  no  person  holding  any 
office  under  the  United  States  could  be  a  member  of  either 
house  of  legislature,  and  therefore  executive  ministers 
appointed  by  the  President  were  entirely  debarred  from 
influence  over  legislation:  the  President  could,  however, 
himself  recommend  to  the  houses  such  measures  as  he 
deemed  necessary  and  convenient.  The  central  judicature 
was  to  have,  as  we  saw,  very  important  functions :  hence  its 
judges  were  to  hold  office  during  good  behaviour,  and  there 
was  no  method  of  proving  that  they  were  not  of  good  behaviour 
except  an  impeachment  begun  by  the  lower  house  and 
judged  by  the  Senate,  and  ending  in  a  conviction.1 

As  the  constitution  was  a  compact  or  bargain  concluded 
by  many  states  its  terms  could  not  be  altered  without  the 
consent  of  the  parties  to  the  compact,  namely  the 
contracting  states,     lne  delegates  proposed  more   changes 
methods  than  one  by  which  the  consent  of  the   of  the.    . 

'.  .  constitution. 

states  to  a  change  in  the  compact  might  be 
given :  but  only  one  method  has  been  actually  used.  Under 
this  method  a  modification  of  the  compact  is  proposed  by 
two  thirds  of  each  house  of  the  central  legislature,  and 
becomes  valid  when  accepted  by  the  legislatures  of  three 
fourths  of  che  states  in  the  confederation. 

In  September  1787  the  delegates  finished  their  draft  of 
the  new  compact  among  the  states.  By  June  1788  conven- 
tions in  nine  states  had  given  their  ratifications,  and  for 
those   nine    states    the    compact   became  binding.      Soon 

1  Bryce,  Am.  Com.,  1.  229. 


490  CLOSER  UNION  [chap.  xxv. 

afterwards  two  more  conventions  ratified,  and  in  March 
1789  the  new  central  government  established  by  eleven 
Ratifications  communities  began  its  work.  By  1790  all  the 
of  draft,  thirteen  communities  had  ratified :  but,  as  some 

of  them  thought  that  the  powers  conferred  on 
the  central  government  were  too  elastic,  ten  amendments 
were  proposed  in  1789  and  ratified  two  years  later  to  set 
limits  on  those  powers.  The  amendments  only  made  clear 
what  was  doubtful,  and  were  such  as  the  majority  of  the 
delegates  who  made  the  draft  would  readily  have  adopted 
if  they  had  occurred  to  their  minds. 

In  the  compact  which  took  effect  in  1789  the  contracting 
communities  were   determined    to    keep   much    power   of 

separate  action  in  their  own  possession :  and  their 
generations  successors  have  held  the  same  determination. 
ia  the  rpj^  ^esjre  0f  the  states  to  keep  control  over  their 

American  r 

Common-  particular  concerns  has  been  greatly  aided  by  the 
independence  and  separation  of  the  executive  and 
legislative  organs  in  the  central  government.  These  two 
organs  do  not  act  together,  and  either  deliberately  or 
unwittingly  the  legislature  thwarts  the  executive.  The 
President  cannot  secure  the  passage  of  such  laws  as  he 
desires  because  his  ministers  are  not  present  in  the  legislature 
and  cannot  exert  influence  over  law  making.  The  houses  of 
the  legislature  (which  is  called  Congress)  have  no  official 
leaders  such  as  are  the  ministers  in  a  unitary  nation,  and  all 
bills  are  merely  private  members'  bills.  These  circumstances 
lead  to  the  introduction  of  a  huge  number  of  trivial  proposals, 
and  make  it  difficult  for  the  houses  to  learn  which  proposals 
are  worthy  of  most  consideration.  In  one  session  nineteen 
thousand  private  members'  bills  were  introduced.1 

In  a  unitary  nation  such  as  England  is  no  great  number 
of  private  members'  bills  are  brought   forward :   members 

1  Bryce,  1.  136  and  137. 


chap,  xxv.]  RATIFIED  491 

know  that  a  private  member's  bill  has  no  chance  of  passing 
unless  the  official  leaders  of  the  houses,  who  control  a 
majority  of  votes  in  the  lower  house,  give  it  committees 
some  support.  Thus  trivial  proposals  are  killed  of  Con£ress- 
before  coming  to  birth.  In  America  they  all  come  before  one 
of  the  houses,  and  the  houses  have  to  do  the  work  of  sifting 
them.  The  work  is  done  for  each  house  by  about  fifty  small 
committees,  each  consisting  of  on  an  average  about  nine  or 
eleven  members.  Each  committee  considers  bills  on  some 
special  subject.  The  most  important  of  the  committees  are 
the  Committees  on  Appropriation,  which  report  to  the  two 
houses  on  bills  touching  the  expenditure  of  the  federal 
revenue. 

The  stages  through  which  a  bill  has  to  pass  in  the 
American  central  legislature  were  originally  copied  from 
the  practice  in  the  British  Parliament.     In  our 

Lcick  of 

parliament  a  bill,  before  it  can  pass,  must  in  each   general 
house  be  read  a  first  time,  usually  without  much   interest  in 

debates. 

discussion :  a  second  reading  is  preceded  by  the 
main  debate,  in  which  the  house  examines  whether  it  likes 
the  main  features  of  the  bill:  after  that  the  bill  is  referred, 
if  important,  to  a  committee  of  the  whole  house  for  consider- 
ation and  amendment  of  details :  then  the  committee  makes 
its  report  to  the  house,  and  there  may  be  a  debate  and 
voting  on  the  amendments  made  in  committee :  lastly  there 
is  a  debate  and  voting  on  the  third  reading.  In  America 
the  first  and  second  readings  are  granted  without  any  dis- 
cussion. Then  the  bill  is  referred  to  its  proper  small 
committee.  The  committee  can  hear  witnesses,  and  usually 
hears  them  with  open  doors:  but  the  newspapers  cannot 
report  the  evidence  heard  by  about  fifty  small  bodies  for 
each  house.1  After  hearing  the  evidence  the  committee 
discusses  its  report,  usually  in  secret.     If  the  committee 

m  1  Bryce,  1.  158. 


492  FEDERAL  [chap.  xxv. 

makes  no  report,  the  bill  is  dead :  if  it  makes  a  report,  the 
house,  if  the  bill  is  of  no  great  importance,  accepts  the 
report  with  very  little  debate,  and  no  one  outside  the 
house  is  any  the  wiser,  unless  the  bill  passes  both  houses  and 
is  published  as  an  Act  of  Congress.  If  a  bill  is  of  great 
consequence,  each  house  has  a  debate  on  the  report,  and 
possibly  on  the  third  reading  :  but  even  then  the  debates  are 
not  studied  by  the  citizens  at  large  with  any  such  interest 
as  is  aroused  by  debates  of  parliament  in  a  unitary  nation, 
because  in  the  American  federation  the  result  of  a  debate 
cannot  lead  to  a  change  of  executive  ruler.  The  bill  under 
debate  was  not  proposed  by  the  President  nor  by  any  of  his 
ministers,  and  its  rejection  cannot  shake  the  credit  of  the 
executive  government.  The  President  was  elected  by  the 
citizens  of  the  United  States  for  four  years,  and  no  vote  of 
the  legislature  can  abridge  his  term  of  office.1 

The  judicature  of  the  central  government  has  risen 
steadily  in  the  estimation  of  Americans  and  of  the  world. 
The  federal  The  American  Commonwealth  which  now  con- 
judicature,  tains  forty  eight  states  has  forty  nine  govern- 
ments, all  co-ordinate.  It  has  accordingly  forty  nine  con- 
stitutions, forty  nine  legislatures,  forty  nine  statute  books. 
Among  the  forty  nine  constitutions  and  the  forty  nine 
statute  books  conflicts  of  laws  are  inevitable.  It  is  the 
chief  business  of  the  federal  judicature  to  consider  cases 
arising  from  conflicts  of  laws,  and  in  those  cases  to  declare 
which  law  overrides  the  other  with  which  it  is  in  conflict. 
For  this  and  for  other  work  the  judicature  is  provided  with 
one  Supreme  Court,  nine  District  Courts,  and  fifty  five 
Circuit  Courts.  The  judges  in  all  these  courts  are  appointed 
by  the  President  with  the  sanction  of  the  Senate,  and  hold 
office  during  good  behaviour.  The  stipend  of  a  judge  in 
the  Supreme  Court  is  ten  thousand  dollars  (£2000),  in  the 

1  Bryce,  1.  156-162.  # 


chap,  xxv.]  JUDICATUEE  493 

Districts   Courts  six   thousand,  in  the  Circuit   Courts  five 
thousand.1 

As  conflicts  of  laws  give  rise  to  most  of  the  disputes  that 
come  before  the  federal  courts,  the  courts  have  to  remember 
what  degree  of  authority  belongs  to  each  system   principles 
of  laws  and  to   decide  accordingly.     The  Con-   for  deciding 

when  Iciws 

stitution  of  the  United  States  was  a  compact  arejn 
made  by  all  the  citizens  of  all  the  states,  and  conflict- 
that  constitution  ranks  first.  The  laws  made  in  Congress 
were  made  ostensibly  under  the  authority  of  the  con- 
stitution: if  they  are  really  such  as  the  constitution 
authorised,  they  rank  with  the  constitution:  if  they  were 
made  in  excess  of  the  powers  granted  by  the  constitution, 
they  are  void.  The  constitution  of  each  state  in  the  union, 
if  not  in  conflict  with  the  federal  constitution  or  with  law 
of  Congress  duly  made,  will  hold  good :  these  constitutions 
rank  third.  Lastly  the  laws  made  by  the  legislatures  in 
each  of  the  forty  eight  states  will  hold  good  only  if  they  do 
not  conflict  with  the  federal  constitution,  or  the  federal  law, 
or  the  constitution  of  the  state  in  which  they  were  made.2 

For  ensuring  that  the  decisions  of  the  federal  courts  take 
effect  there  is  almost  no  official  force  that  can  be  used. 
There  is  no  body  of  police  under  the  command    ... 

*  *  Absence  of 

of  the  central  government:  each  state  has  its  federal 
own  police,  but  that  police  is  not  in  any  way  poUce- 
under  the  control  of  the  federal  executive.  Each  federal 
court  has  one  officer,  a  marshal,  to  put  its  decisions  in 
execution.  If  the  marshal  is  impeded  in  his  duty,  he  can 
ask  any  private  citizen  to  help  him,  or  he  can  summon 
federal  troops  from  Washington,  the  seat  of  the  federal 
government.8      In  practice    the  decisions  of    the    federal 

1  Bryoe,  Part  1.  ch.  22.  I  give  the  figures  relating  to  the  Courts  as  they 
stood  in  1893,  which  is  the  date  of  my  copy  of  Bryce's  book. 

2  Bryce,  Part  1.  ch.  23, 
*  Bryce,  1.  231. 


494  THE  FOETY  EIGHT  STATES       [chap.  xxv. 

courts  are  obeyed.  The  American  citizens  like  the  federal 
courts,  because  the  existence  of  those  courts  makes  it  possible 
for  every  citizen  to  live  under  two  competing  governments, 
and  thus  to  be  much  less  controlled  by  any  government 
than  a  citizen  of  a  unitary  state  can  be. 

The  governments  of  the  forty  eight  states  have  more 
control  than  the  federal  government  over  the  actions  of  the 

citizens.  Each  has  a  government  divided  into 
mentsofthe  legislature,  executive  governor  elected  by  the 
forty  eight      citizens,  and  judicature.      The  legislature  has 

the  power  to  make  new  laws  about  property, 
crime,  and  marriage,  but  naturally  does  not  exercise  it  often  ; 
sometimes  it  may  make  laws  about  sanitary  precautions 
or  education:  :most  commonly  it  is  occupied  in  granting 
charters  and  privileges  to  commercial  companies.  Both 
the  judicature  and  the  executive  government  in  a  state  are 
kept  busy.  The  judges  are  elected  by  the  inhabitants  of 
the  districts  under  their  jurisdiction,  usually  for  a  short 
term  of  years,  and  it  is  marvellous  that  they  are  not  entirely 
incapable  and  corrupt :  they  may  be  restrained  perhaps  by 
the  presence  in  the  states  of  federal  courts,  and  by  the 
professional  opinion  of  lawyers:  but  even  so,  justice  is  more 
costly  to  the  suitors  than  it  is  in  any  unitary  community. 
Of  the  executive  officers  the  police  are  the  most  active: 
each  county  and  each  town  has  a  police  force  of  its  own, 
and  the  legislature  of  the  state  in  which  the  counties  and 
towns  are  situate  settles  how  the  chief  constables  and  their 
subordinates  shall  be  elected  or  appointed. 

Since  the  compact  made  in  1789  did  not  establish  a  single 
supreme  government  but  left  a  multiplicity  of  co-ordinate 
governments  still  standing,  it  was  not  likely  that  any  American 
citizen  would  feel,  as  an  Englishman  then  usually  did  feel, 
that  his  circumstances  made  him  naturally  a  member  of  a 
party  striving  for  definite  political  aims.     In  England  there 


chap,  xxv.]  PARTIES  495 

was  only  one  government:  every  man  either  had  or  had  not 
the  privilege  of  helping  to  elect  the  supporters  of  that 
government,  and  therefore  there  was  in  England   „   li    . 

0  '  &  Parties  in 

a  clear  division  into  Haves  and  Have-nots.  In  the  United 
America  every  citizen  was  under  two  govern-  states- 
ments,  and  all  citizens  who  cared  could  enjoy  the  privilege 
of  helping  to  elect  both  governments.  But  the  federal 
government  at  Washington  was  in  general  wiser  and  more 
active  than  the  governments  in  the  component  states  of  the 
union,  because  it  had  to  attend  to  wider  interests.  Hence 
Americans  of  some  generations  divided  themselves  into 
those  who  desired  the  federal  government  to  be  as  strong 
as  the  compact  would  allow,  and  those  who  desired  it  to  be 
as  weak  as  the  compact  would  allow.  In  other  generations 
there  has  been  no  divergence  of  desires  relating  to  political 
aims  of  permanent  importance,  and  in  those  generations 
there  have  been  no  parties  properly  called  political. 

From  1794  for  nearly  a  generation  those  who  desired  a 
strong  central  government  were  called  Federalists:  their 
opponents  were  called  Republicans,  as  desiring  to 
have  thirteen  republics  nearly  free  to  act  as  existence  of 
they  chose.  Then  from  1817  to  1850  there  were  parties' 
no  well  marked  parties.  But  by  1850  Americans  had  settled 
in  large  numbers  in  the  expanse  of  territory  to  the  west  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  the  states  in  the  union,  of  which  there 
were  then  thirty,  had  to  consider  whether  the  settlements 
in  the  west  should  be  admitted  as  new  states  into  the 
confederation,  and  whether  their  inhabitants  should  be 
allowed  to  own  slaves.  On  these  questions  the  year  1854 
witnessed  the  formation  of  new  parties  in  the  thirty  states. 
Those  men  who  aimed  at  obtaining  a  strong  central  govern- 
ment and  at  prohibiting  slavery  in  new  states  were  called 
Republicans,  as  desiring  one  American  Republic:  their 
opponents,  who  desired  that  every  state  new  or  old  should 


496  PARTIES  [chap.  xxv. 

be  free  to  recognise  or  not  to  recognise  property  in  slaves 
were  called  Democrats.  It  is  indicative  of  the  lack  of 
continuity  in  American  parties  that  the  name  Republican 
was  borne  from  1794  to  1817  by  those  who  desired  thirteen 
small  republics,  but  from  1850  onwards  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century  by  those  who  desired  one  Republic  of  all  the 
Americans. 

In  1861  eleven  southern  states,  which  desired  that  slavery 
might  be  allowed  in  the  western  territory,  seceded  from  the 
„.  .,       .      United  States  and  formed  a  separate  confedera- 

C  i  vil  war  in 

America,  tion.  The  northern  states  for  four  years  carried 
1861-1865.        on  a  greafc  war  £0  force  them  back  into  the  union, 

and  they  attained  their  object.  The  victors  in  the  war 
belonged  to  that  party  which  desired  that  all  the  states 
should  by  the  insertion  of  new  clauses  in  the  federal 
constitution  make  a  compact  to  abolish  slavery  in  all  the 
states  in  the  union.  The  new  compact  that  they  desired 
was  made  by  amendments  in  the  constitution  duly  ratified 
by  the  states,  and  the  amendments  greatly  increased  the 
control  of  the  central  government  over  the  inhabitants  of 
the  component  states,  and  in  the  same  degree  curtailed  the 
authority  of  the  governments  in  the  single  states. 

Since  1875  there  have  been  no  parties  in  America  aiming 
at  different  political  objects  in  which  every  citizen  must 
take  a  keen  interest :  but  the  Americans  are  still 
organisation  divided  into  two  groups  which  seek  to  get  the 
of  parties  in  kjg  offices  for  their  leaders  and  petty  employ- 
ments under  the  federal  government  for  the 
followers.  As  there  are  no  political  objects  of  great 
permanent  importance  in  view,  the  citizens  at  large  do  not 
care  to  exert  influence  over  the  parties,  and  the  proceedings 
of  the  parties  are  entirely  managed  by  armies  of  paid  wire- 
pullers. The  organisation  of  the  modern  parties  that  seek 
only  office  has  attained  a  perfection  that  was  unknown  to 


chap,  xxv.]  AMERICAN  CITIES  497 

the  earlier  parties  that  strove  after  aims  of  general  public 
interest.1 

The  communities  that  now  live  on  the  Atlantic  shore  of 
North  America  are  at  least  in  some  cases  rather  the 
successors   than  the   descendants   of   the  com-   „ 

Growth  of 

munities  that  in  1789  founded  the  United  States.  American 
Families  have  migrated  in  large  numbers  from  Clties' 
the  eastern  states  westward,  and  swarms  of  needy  immigrants 
have  arrived  from  Europe  at  the  ports  of  the  eastern  sea- 
board. The  best  of  the  newcomers  soon  move  westward, 
but  the  most  shiftless,  and  the  poorest,  stay  at  the  port  of 
arrival  for  many  years  or  for  their  lives.  Thus  New  York, 
the  chief  port  of  debarkation,  is  only  a  halting  place  for 
enterprising  immigrants,  but  for  the  helpless  a  domicile. 
The  influx  of  population  from  Europe,  and  the  inability  of 
its  weakest  elements  to  advance  to  the  west  from  the  port 
of  arrival,  has  made  a  revolution  in  the  economic  condition 
of  some  eastern  states.  In  1750  the  State  of  New  York  had 
only  ninety  thousand  inhabitants,  the  city  only  twelve 
thousand.  In  1870  the  state  had  nearly  four  and  a  half 
millions,  the  city  nearly  one  million :  now  the  state  has  nine 
millions,  the  city  nearly  five.  In  1750  the  twelve  thousand 
citizens  of  New  York  consisted  of  steady  and  quiet-going 
Dutch  traders  and  their  dependents.  Now  the  city  contains 
thousands  of  speculating  financiers  some  of  whom  count 
their  possessions  in  scores  of  millions  of  dollars :  but  it  also 
contains  a  million  or  two  of  proletariate  unable  to  make  any 
progress  towards  permanent  prosperity.2 

The  legislature  of  the  State  of  New  York,  which  sits  at 
Albany,  gives  a  frame  of  government  to  its  cities  one  by  one, 
and  makes  no  general  scheme  for  all  its  cities.     Till  1857  it 

1  On  the  whole  subject  of  parties  in  America  see  some  admirable  chapters 
by  Mr.  (now  Viscount)  Bryce  in  Part  m.  of  his  American  Commonwealth. 
For  the  history  of  parties  see  A.  Johnston,  Hist.,  articles  304,  330,  417,  616. 

1  Bryce,  ch.  88  ;  Statesman's  Yearbook,  1881,  and  any  recent  year. 

21 


498  TAMMANY  [chap.  xxv. 

gave  the  government  of  New  York  city  mainly  to  an  elective 
council:  in  1857  it  gave  more  power  and  in  1870  nearly  all 
power  to  an  elective  mayor.  Ever  since  1789 
there  had  been  in  the  city  an  association  which 
held  friendly  gatherings  and  promoted  charitable  schemes : 
in  1805  it  took  the  Indian  name  of  Tammany,  and  gave  its 
officers  titles  which  had  been  used  by  the  tribe  of  the 
Iroquois,  whose  headquarters  had  been  at  Schenectady 
near  Albany.  About  1865  an  adventurer  named  Tweed 
saw  that  a  clever  wirepuller  in  the  Tammany  Society 
might  make  his  fortune.  He  and  three  other  men,  by 
making  use  of  the  machinery  established  by  the  Tammany 
Society,  got  control  of  a  solid  mass  of  130,000  thoroughly 
ignorant  voters :  they  were  known  as  the  Tammany  Ring, 
and  by  1870  they  had  plundered  the  city  of  thirty  or  fifty 
million  dollars.  In  1870  the  personal  rule  of  Tweed  and  the 
other  three  was  exposed  and  overthrown  by  the  honest  and 
intelligent  part  of  the  citizens :  but  by  1876  a  new  Tammany 
had  arisen.  Its  operations  were  facilitated  by  the  charter 
given  to  New  York  in  1870,  which  put  nearly  all  power  in 
the  hands  of  the  mayor,  authorising  him  to  appoint  all  the 
chief  officers  in  the  city,  and  in  particular  the  heads  of  the 
police,  and  the  judges  in  the  courts  of  first  instance  for 
criminal  cases,  which  we  wrongly  call  police  courts.  In 
1894  no  man  who  declined  to  subscribe  to  the  funds  of 
Tammany  could  get  justice  or  be  exempt  from  persecution.1 

Tammany  is  by  no  means  an  isolated  phenomenon  peculiar 
to  New  York:  similar  methods  of  government  prevail  in 
Rationale  of  Philadelphia,  Chicago,  Brooklyn  and  St.  Louis.2 
Tammany.  ^nd  j^  js  qUite  in  accordance  with  analogy  that 
such  methods  of  government  should  prevail  in  the  greatest 
American  cities.  The  cities,  now  that  they  have  grown 
large,  are  not  under  the  control  of  any  community  larger 

1  Bryce,  2.  .309,  400.  2  Bryce,  ch.  88,  first  paragraph. 


chap,  xxv.]  TAMMANY  499 

than  themselves.  The  federal  government  of  the  United 
States  never  had  any  authority  to  interfere  in  their 
domestic  concerns.  The  thirteen  states  that  made  the 
union  had  the  power  to  rule  their  cities,  and  while  the 
cities  were  small  they  made  use  of  it  effectively :  now  that 
the  cities  have  attained  to  great  size  and  wealth  it  is  of  no 
avail,  because  the  cities  partly  by  numbers  of  votes  and 
partly  by  bribery  and  threats  control  the  legislatures  of  the 
states:  New  York  has  more  than  half  the  votes  in  the 
legislature  at  Albany,  Philadelphia  and  Chicago  have  large 
batches  of  votes  in  their  states  of  Pennsylvania  and  Illinois. 
The  cities  are  independent,  or  are  city  states,  in  almost 
every  particular,  except  that  they  wage  no  wars,  and  thus 
are  like  the  Greek  maritime  cities  before  480  B.C.  and  the 
inland  cities  of  Italy  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries.  It  is  then  not  surprising  that  they  have  class 
governments,  or  perhaps  I  should  say,  bastard  class 
governments,  not  run  by  a  class  but  ostensibly  run  in  the 
interest  of  one  class,  and  actually  oppressive  to  other  classes. 
New  York  can  afford  to  keep  an  adulterine  class  government 
because  it  can  never  need  to  defend  itself  in  war.  A  clear- 
sighted writer  in  an  American  periodical  said  in  1876  that 
if  New  York  were  independent  in  its  foreign  policy,  as  Rome 
was,  it  would  have  a  Caesar  within  six  months ; *  and  any  one 
can  see  that  in  half  that  time  it  would  have  a  government 
that  would  make  a  clean  sweep  of  Tammany.  The  city 
outside  America  that  is  like  New  York  is  not  Rome  or 
Athens  in  the  days  of  their  worse  corruption,  but  Florence 
in  the  second  half  of  the  fourteenth  century.  At  Rome  and 
Athens  the  strongest  of  the  classes  was  always  able  to  do 
the  work  of  governing :  at  Florence  after  1343  the  dominant 
class,  the  rich  merchants,  could  not  govern  because  guilds 
and  single  rich  men  were  too  jealous  of  one  another  to  let 

1  Bryce,2.  395,  396. 


500  TAMMANY  [chap.  xxv. 

any  man  learn  the  art  of  governing:  therefore  Florence 
came  under  the  rule  of  the  captains  of  the  Parte  Guelfa.1  In 
New  York  the  multitudes  of  the  proletariate,  who  are  the 
biggest  class  by  far,  can  cram  the  ballot  boxes  with  their 
votes,  but  are  too  ignorant  and  feckless  to  think  of  ruling : 
therefore  New  York  is  governed  by  Tammany,  the  modern 
analogue  of  the  Parte  Guelfa. 

As  the  circumstances  of  the  American  cities  are  such  that 
governments  like  Tammany  grow  up  in  them  and  find  in 
Successes  them  abundant  nutriment  to  sustain  them, 
gained  by  governments  of  the  Tammany  type  have  in  most 
and  similar  °f  tne  years  since  about  1876  succeeded  in  most 
rings.  0f  the  cities  in  getting  installed  in  authority.    In 

New  York  valiant  efforts  have  been  made  now  and  again 
by  the  honest  citizens  to  get  an  honest  government,  and 
three  or  four  of  them  have  succeeded :  in  the  contest  that 
I  chance  to  remember  best  the  champion  of  the  honest 
citizens  was  Seth  Low,  the  distinguished  and  munificent 
Principal  of  Columbia  University.  The  sporadic  successes 
of  the  men  who  mean  well  by  their  neighbours  have  some- 
what alarmed  the  Tammany  bosses,  and  I  do  not  know  any 
evidence  to  show  that  they  are  now  guilty  of  such  cruel  and 
universal  persecution  of  their  opponents  as  was  steadily 
practised  by  their  predecessors  thirty  or  forty  years  ago: 
but  on  the  other  hand,  notices  that  occur  now  and  again 
in  newspapers  indicate  that  isolated  cases  of  atrocities,  equal 
to  any  of  those  perpetrated  by  Tweed  and  his  colleagues, 
are  even  now  not  beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility. 

In  Switzerland  strife  between  churches  was  sharp  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  less  violent  towards  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth,  and  in  1712  was  laid  aside  at  a  treaty  concluded 
by  the  cantons  at  Aarau.  But  the  strife  had  done  its  work, 
and    towards    the  close  of   the    eighteenth    century    the 

1  See  page  372. 


chap,  xxv.]  THE  SWISS  CANTONS  501 

meetings  of  the  ambassadors  of  the  thirteen  cantons  were 
simply  meetings  of  ambassadors,  and  did  not  serve  as  some 
earlier    meetings    had  served    as  an    incohate  . 

common  government  for  the  cantons.  If  any  cantons, 
proposition  of  importance  was  made  to  the  am-  I7°°-I797- 
bassadors  by  a  canton  or  its  ambassadors,  the  other  ambas- 
sadors or  a  good  part  of  them  merely  took  the  proposition 
ad  referendum,  that  is  to  say,  for  carrying  home  to  their 
masters  in  their  cantons  for  their  decision  by  a  vote  taken  in 
a  council  or  a  folkmoot.1  And,  further,  the  men  under  the 
rule  of  a  single  canton  were  for  three  reasons  not  usually  one 
community.  Firstly,  a  canton  often  had  dependencies :  thus 
even  the  mountain  canton  of  Uri  kept  in  subjection  both 
the  Urseren  Thai  from  Andermatt  to  the  Gotthard  Pass  and 
the  Liviner  Thai  beyond  the  Alps :  the  dependencies  were 
separate  communities  from  the  canton  that  ruled  them. 
Secondly,  in  the  town  cantons,  as  Zurich  and  Bern,  the 
townsmen  ever  since  the  Middle  Ages  had  through  superior 
wealth  and  intelligence  kept  down  the  country-folk :  since 
about  1500  the  best  of  the  peasantry  had  gone  abroad  to 
serve  as  mercenaries  to  foreign  powers,  and  the  country- 
folk left  behind  were  further  weakened  by  their  departure. 
Thirdly,  even  within  the  towns  sharp  distinctions  between 
classes  had  arisen,  as  they  always  do  arise  in  cities  that  are 
independent.  In  several  cities  the  members  of  the  richest 
and  oldest  families  had  engrossed  all  the  power,  and  entirely 
deprived  the  other  citizens  of  political  privileges.2 

In  1797  some  of  the  discontented  in  Switzerland  asked 

1  Striking  instances  of  such  action  of  ambassadors  occurred  in  1791  and 
again  on  September  3,  1792,  on  receipt  of  the  news  that  the  Swiss  regiments 
had  been  slaughtered  on  August  10  at  the  sack  of  the  Tuileries  in  Paris. — 
Miiller,  Hist.  Confid.  Suisse,  continuee  par  Monnard,  15.  452  and  466. 

2  My  authorities  for  the  history  of  Switzerland,  1500-1848,  are  in  the  main 
Oechsli,  Quellenbuch,  and  the  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  6,  ch.  17,  and 
vol.  11,  p.  234  and  foil.  For  Switzerland,  1760-1798,  also  vol.  15  by  Monnard 
of  Hist.  Con/id.  Suisse  par  Johannes  v,  Miiller,  traduite  et  continue'e. 


502  THE  SWISS  [chap.  xxv. 

help  of  the  French,  then  ruled  by  Directors :  it  chanced  that 
the  man  most  openly  approached  was  General  Napoleon 
.  Buonaparte.  In  1798  the  French,  while  Buona- 
cantons,  parte  was  absent  in  Egypt,  intervened  by  force 
1797-1  I4"  in  Switzerland,  deprived  every  canton  of  the 
right  to  manage  its  domestic  affairs,  and  tried  to  turn  the 
Swiss  into  a  republic,  '  one,  indivisible,  democratic  and  re- 
presentative ' :  but  they  kept  the  new  republic  under  their 
influence  by  means  of  a  French  army  of  occupation.  The 
Swiss  gained  something  by  coming  under  one  government, 
but  they  soon  found  that  the  French  were  more  active  in 
robbing  than  in  befriending  them.  When  Buonaparte  was 
First  Consul  they  applied  to  him  for  relief,  and  in  1803  he 
by  his  Act  of  Intervention  restored  the  cantons  and  allowed 
them  to  send  ambassadors  to  hold  meetings,  but  took  pre- 
cautions against  the  abuses  which  before  1798  had  provoked 
discontents.  In  1814  the  Powers  of  Europe  in  Congress  at 
Vienna  agreed  that  Switzerland  should  have  its  neutrality 
guaranteed  by  them,  and  thus  be  spared  from  foreign  wars. 
In  the  next  year  the  cantons,  now  numbering  twenty  two, 
made  a  new  compact  among  themselves.  It  was  some- 
what like  the  compact  which  Buonaparte  had  dictated  to 
them  in  1803,  but  it  gave  more  freedom  of  action  to  each 
of  the  twenty  two  cantons — for  it  only  forbade  cantons  to 
make  separate  alliances  detrimental  to  other  cantons,  thus 
permitting  alliances  that  were  not  detrimental:  and,  like 
the  Act  of  Intervention  made  by  Buonaparte  in  1803,  it 
provided  no  representative  assembly  for  all  Switzerland,  and 
no  executive  organ  common  to  all  the  cantons.  The 
ambassadors  were  to  meet  in  successive  years  in  Zurich, 
Bern,  and  Luzern,  which  were  called  Vorwte,  or  Presiding 
Cantons.  The  execution  of  the  resolutions  of  the  ambas- 
sadors was  left  to  the  cantonal  government  of  the  Vorort 
for  the  time  being,  which  had  no  means  of  ensuring  that 


chap,  xxv.]  CANTONS  503 

they  took  effect.1  But  the  assembled  ambassadors  were 
empowered  to  take  all  necessary  measures  for  the  external 
and  internal  safety  of  the  League  of  Cantons,  and  thus 
obtained  more  of  the  character  of  an  authorised  common 
government  than  any  meetings  of  ambassadors  had  as  yet 
enjoyed.2 

In  1830,  1831  all  the  town  cantons  except  Freiburg  took 
new  constitutions,  which  established  in  them  representative 
assemblies,  elected  by  all  the  inhabitants,  The  cantons, 
townsmen  and  country-folk  alike.  These  new  i8i4-i884. 
constitutions  were  resented  in  some  cantons  by  the  old 
privileged  orders,  and  in  three  cantons  civil  war  ensued. 
The  new  representative  assembly  in  the  canton  of  Aargau 
suppressed  monasteries,  and  gradually  those  cantons  which 
disliked  this  innovation  and  all  innovations  took  alarm. 
In  1845  seven  of  these  cantons  formed  an  armed  Separate 
League,  a  Sonderbund.  They  had  only  a  fifth  of  the  Swiss 
population,  but  they  hoped  for  foreign  aid,  which  might 
enable  them  to  overpower  the  remaining  fifteen  cantons. 
Austria  wished  to  help  the  Sonderbund,  and  to  crush  the 
other  Swiss :  France  and  Prussia  were  half  inclined  to  do  the 
like,  if  it  cost  them  nothing  and  brought  them  gain.  Palmer- 
ston,  Foreign  Minister  in  England,  outwitted  Austria,  France, 
and  Prussia,  and  there  was  no  foreign  intervention.3  By 
November  1847  the  fifteen  cantons  had  overpowered  the 
Sonderbund  by  force  of  arms :  they  saw  that  a  compact  of 
junction  of  all  the  cantons  was  needed,  and  their  ambassadors 
appointed 4  a  committee  to  propose  the  terms   of  such  a 

1  Gamb.  Mod.  Hist.,  11.  243. 

2  Compact  of  1815,  Bundesvertrag,  art.  8,  last  clause :  see  Oechsli, 
Quellenbuch,  489.  This  last  clause  in  art.  8  was  noticed  in  1848  in  a  very 
important  document  of  state  as  making  a  marked  innovation.  Quellenbuch, 
p.  524,  end  of  first  paragraph. 

3  Camb.  Mod.  Hist.,  11.  250,  in  an  excellent  chapter  by  Oechsli. 

4  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch,  p.  523.     Heading  233. 


504  UNION  OF  CANTONS  [chap.  xxv. 

compact.  In  the  spring  of  1848  the  committee  was  freed 
from  all  fear  of  foreign  intervention  by  outbreaks  of  fierce 
civil  strife  in  Paris,  Vienna,  Lombardy,  Venice,  Holstein, 
and  Berlin. 

The  Swiss  cantons  in  1848  were  moved  to  desire  a  compact 
of  junction  by  much  the  same  reasons  as  had  influenced  the 
American  states  in  the  like  direction  sixty  years 
cantons  earlier:  but  in  many  respects  the  communities 

vriththe  m  tne  cantons  were  unlike  what  the  communities 
American        in  the  American  states  had  been.     The  American 

states 

peoples  at  the  time  of  their  junction  had  none 
of  them  existed  more  than  about  a  century  and  a  half, 
and  some  were  much  younger.  Eight  of  the  Swiss 
cantons  could  trace  their  history  back  to  the  early  Middle 
Ages,  and  three,  Uri,  Schwyz,  and  Unterwalden,  were  living 
in  1848  under  a  form  of  government  older  by  at  least  a 
thousand  years  than  any  other  in  the  civilised  world.  The 
American  states  were  all  nearly  alike  in  history,  race,  language 
and  religion.  Of  the  Swiss  cantons  fourteen  were  purely 
Alamannic  German  in  race  and  language :  three  cantons  and 
the  halves  of  three  more,  being  descended  from  a  mixture 
of  Burgundian  Germans  with  subjects  of  the  Caesars,  spoke 
French  :  one  canton,  Ticino,  was  Italian  in  race  and  language : 
one  was  derived  from  Rhsetians  conquered  by  Drusus  and 
Tiberius  in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  and  spoke  two  dialects 
derived  from  Latin  called  respectively  Ladin  and  Rhaetisch- 
Romonsch :  and  lastly  of  the  whole  Swiss  population  three 
fifths  were  Protestants  and  the  rest  Catholics.1  Yet  in  spite 
of  all  these  dissimilarities  a  junction  was  brought  about 
more  easily  in  Switzerland  than  in  America.  A  Swiss  canton 
had  in  area  about  a  twentieth  part  of  the  whole  area  of  an 
American  state  in  1787,  or  a  tenth  of  the  settled  area,  and 
it  would  have  been  absurd  if  in  Modern  Europe  communities 

1  Erzinger,  Schrceizer  Katechismus,  11,  12. 


chap,  xxv.]  DESIRED  505 

so  minute  as  those  in  the  cantons  had  tried  any  longer  to 
stand  alone.  The  peoples  of  the  cantons  had  learned  to 
know  one  another  from  experience  in  many  centuries  of 
hearty  friendship  or  of  eager  strife,  and  the  men  then  living 
in  the  cantons  had  recently  gained  fresh  knowledge  of  the 
mischief  that  came  of  disunion. 

The  proposals  for  junction  drawn  up  by  the  committee 
can  be  divided  under  the  same  heads  as  the  proposals  made 
in   1787   by  the  American   convention.     These   _   „   , 

J  Draft  of 

heads   are   (1)   Powers  granted  by  the  cantons  compact. 

to  a  new  common  government,  (2)  Structure  of      ea  lngs" 

the  common  government,  (3)  Methods  to  be  adopted  in 

future  revisions  of  the  compact. 

Before  I  state  what  powers  it  was  proposed  that  the  cantons 

should  hand  over  to  a  new  common  government,  I  venture 

to   express   the  opinion   that  the  whole  of  the 

powers  practically  residing  in  the  hands  of  the  nature  of  the 

cantons  were  very  much  fewer  than  those  enjoyed   P°wers *°  ^e 
•*  .      disposed  of. 

by   the   American  states   at   the  time   of  their 

junction.     The  American  peoples  were  young,  settled  on 

large    areas    of    virgin    soil    with    infinite  possibilities   of 

entering  on   new  enterprises  and  experiments:   they  had 

recently  waged  a  war  by  sea  and  land  with  a  foreign  power, 

and  they  might  expect  such  wars  in  the  future.     The  peoples 

in  the  Swiss  cantons  were  old,  minute,  strictly  circumscribed  : 

they  had  already   tried   most   of  the  ventures   that  were 

possible  for  them,  they  had  no  access  to  the  sea,  and,  since 

their  neutrality  was  guaranteed  by  the  Powers  of  Europe, 

they  could  not  need  to  wage  any  war  with  a  foreign  power, 

unless  their  land  was  invaded  by  some  one  who  was  either 

crazy,  or  desperate,  or  omnipotent. 

The  draft  prepared  by  the  committee  gave  to  the  new 

common  government  the  sole  right  of  making  war,  peace, 

and    treaties,    of   imposing    customs-duties    and    tolls,    of 


506  UNION  OF  CANTONS  [chap.  xxv. 

coining  money,  of  ensuring  uniformity  in  weights  and 
measures,1  of  making  and  selling  gunpowder,  and  of 
Draft:  managing  the  postal  service,  and  also  authorised 

powers  of  the  ft  to  undertake  public  works  and  maintain 
government  roads  and  bridges,  whenever  any  of  these  was 
and  of  the       0f  common  interest  to  the  cantons  or  to  a  large 

cantonal  ° 

govern-  number  of  the  cantons.     Though  these  powers 

ments-  ceded  to  the  common  government  were  small, 

the  powers  left  to  the  cantonal  governments  and  actually 
exercised  by  them  were,  for  reasons  indicated  above,  smaller 
still.  The  cantons  were  not  likely  for  the  present  to  use 
much  more  powers  than  those  that  in  England  are  entrusted 
to  a  large  municipality. 

In  the  structure  of  the  common  government  the  committee 

did  not  keep  the  legislature  and  the  executive  independent 

of  one  another.     The  legislature  was  to  be  in  two 

Draft :  ° 

structure  houses,  elected  both  at  once  to  sit  for  three 
of  common      yearg      Ttje    j^^    nouse     Nationalrath,    the 

government.    ^ 

Council  of  the  Nation,  was  to  be  elected  by  all 
citizens  of  all  cantons  acting  as  individuals,  and  in  it  each 
canton  had  members  in  proportion  to  its  population :  in  the 
upper  house,  Standeraih,  Council  of  the  Cantons,  each  canton 
had  two  members,  elected  in  such  manner  as  the  cantons 
might  prefer :  each  member  had  a  vote  of  his  own,  and  was 
not  bound  by  instructions  from  his  canton.2  The  executive, 
called  Bundesrath,  Council  of  the  Federation,  consisted  of 
seven  ministers  elected  by  the  two  houses  in  common  session 
to  hold  office  till  there  was  a  fresh  election  of  the  two  houses. 
The  members  of  the  executive  could  not  be  members  of 
either  house,  but,  as  they  had  a  right  to  be  present  and  to 
speak  at  any  meeting  of  either  house  and  to  propose  amend - 

1  This  is  the  meaning  of  art.  37,  printed  in  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch,  p.  531. 
See  Erzinger,  Katechirnius,  p.  155. 

2  Erzinger,  Kalechismiw,  233.    Const,  of  1848,  art.  79.     Quellenbuch,  535. 


chap,  xxv.]  PROPOSED  507 

raents  to  motions,  they  had  an  influence  over  legislation  that 
was  unknown  to  an  American  President  and  his  ministers  : 1 
on  the  other  hand,  the  seven  men  elected  to  serve  as  an 
executive  ministry  or  Bundesrath,  when  once  elected,  were 
independent  of  the  houses,  because  the  houses  could  not 
turn  them  out  of  office.  A  judicial  organ  was  to  be  part  of 
the  common  government,  but  it  was  far  less  important  than 
in  America  because  it  had  no  authority  to  decide  questions 
about  the  respective  powers  of  the  common  government  and 
of  the  cantonal  governments:  these  questions  were  to  be 
solved  by  the  common  legislature.2 

It  was  to  be  in  the  power  of  either  house  of  the  legislature 
or  of  any  fifty  thousand  qualified  citizens  to  propose  that  the 
compact  should  be  revised,  without  stating  what  changes  in 
form  the  revision  should  take.  If  such  a  proposal  the  comPact- 
were  made  and  the  two  houses  were  not  agreed  on  it,  all 
citizens  were  to  be  asked  to  vote  on  the  question  Shall  a 
revision  be  undertaken  ?  If  a  simple  majority  of  citizens  said 
Aye,  the  existing  houses  were  thereby  dissolved,  and  new 
houses  were  to  be  elected.  Those  new  houses  were  to  make 
a  draft  of  new  articles  in  the  compact,  and  the  draft  was  to 
be  submitted  to  a  vote  of  all  the  citizens  of  all  the  cantons. 
In  all  cases  drafting  of  new  articles  in  the  constitution  could 
only  be  done  by  the  two  houses:  the  constitution  expressly 
says  '  Revision  of  the  constitution  is  to  take  place  by  legis- 
lative process.' 3  If  the  draft  was  approved  by  a  majority  of 
all  the  citizens  and  by  majorities  of  citizens  in  a  majority  of 
the  cantons,  the  new  articles  were  to  become  part  of  the 
compact  among  the  cantons.4 

The  committee  did  not  settle  how  the  compact  which 
they  had  prepared  should  be  ratified.    The  ambassadors  of 

1  Const,  of  1848,  art.  89,  in  Qitellenbuch,  536. 

a  Ibid.,  art.  74,  clause  17. 

5  Ibid.,  art.  111.  4  Ibid.,  articles  111-114. 


508  CLOSEK  UNION  [chap.  xxv. 

the  cantons  who  had  appointed  the  committee  submitted 
it  to  a  vote  to  all  the  citizens  in  all  the  cantons.  It  was 
Ratification  accepted  by  fifteen  and  a  half  cantons  out  of 
and  character  twenty  two.     The  population  of  the  accepting 

of  the  .  ....  i.     i 

compact  cantons  was  nearly  two  millions,  of  the  reject- 
ed 1848.  jng  canons  \GSS  than  three  hundred  thousand.1 
Thus  the  junction  of  the  Swiss  cantons  made  in  1848  was 
emphatically  a  junction  of  communities  made  by  com- 
munities. 

The  committee  which  prepared  the  articles  of  the  compact 

of  1848  laid  it  down  that  the  objects  of  the  compact  were 

the  assertion  of  independence  towards  peoples 

Insufficiency  r  r     r 

of  the  1848  outside,  the  maintenance  of  internal  peace  and 
compac .  order)  the  protection  of  the  freedom  and  rights 
of  the  citizens,  and  the  promotion  of  their  common  welfare.2 
In  dealing  with  matters  internal,  they  actually  and,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  wisely  did  not  attempt  to  do  more  than  protect 
each  canton  and  its  inhabitants  from  such  injuries  as  experi- 
ence had  shown  they  might  suffer  from  the  action  of  other 
cantons  and  their  inhabitants.  But  provisions  made  with 
so  limited  a  scope  could  not  suffice  for  long  in  an  age  when 
the  habits  of  all  civilised  men  were  changing  rapidly. 
Between  1848  and  1870  the  Swiss  actually  suffered  from 
the  establishment  of  public  gaming  tables  at  Sax,  from 
a  great  variety  of  banknotes  issued  by  twenty  five  banks 
and  not  always  easily  redeemable,3  from  overworking  of 
children  and  factory  hands,  from  improvident  destruction 
of  forests  by  villagers  in  the  mountains,  and  from  the  in- 
competence of  the  cantonal  governments  to  construct  and 
maintain  great  public  works  of  general  necessity  and  utility. 
In  1874  proposals  were  made  in  the  two  houses  of  the 
common  legislature  to  mend  the  compact.     It  was  proposed 

1  Oechsli,  Quellenbuch,  539. 

2  Const,  of  1848,  art.  2.  3  Katechismus,  153. 


chap,  xxv.]  OF  CANTONS  509 

(1)  To  forbid  public  gaming  tables  absolutely  by  an  article 
in  the  constitution.     (2)  To  empower  the  common  legisla- 
ture to  embank  rivers  and  torrents,  to  make  laws 
about  forests  and  game  and  fishing  and  railways  amend  the° 
and  telegraphs,  to   ordain  sanitary  precautions,   comPact, 
to  regulate  hours  of  labour,  medical   diplomas, 
banknotes,  naturalisation,  marriage  and  copyright.    (3)  To 
enable    the    common   judicature   to   decide    between    the 
common  and  the  cantonal  governments  both  in  questions 
relating  to  property  and  in  the  far  more  important  disputes 
that  were  sure  in  the  course  of  time  to  arise  in  regard  to  the 
limits  of  the  powers  conferred  on  the  common  government 
by  the  compact.1 

Under  the  scheme  put  forward  by  the  two  houses  in  1874 
the  powers  conceded  to  the  common  government  were 
decidedly  larger  than  those  given  to  the  common  Referendum, 
government  in  America,  and  the  powers  of  the  l874# 
cantons  were  less  than  those  of  the  American  states :  this 
was  reasonable  in  view  of  the  minute  dimensions  of  the 
Swiss  cantons.  But  the  houses  foresaw  that  the  citizens  in 
the  cantons,  especially  in  the  smaller  cantons,  would  be 
alarmed  at  the  large  powers  that  they  proposed  to  give  to 
the  common  legislature,  and  would  be  likely  to  reject  the 
whole  scheme  unless  they  were  endowed  with  some  new 
power  of  restraining  the  actions  of  the  common  legislature. 
In  order  to  allay  their  alarms  they  gave  them  a  potent 
weapon  for  killing  any  law  that  they  thought  mischievous. 
We  have  already  seen  that  if  the  two  houses  proposed  a 
change  in  the  compact  among  the  cantons,  the  proposal 
did  not  take  effect  unless  it  were  approved  by  a  majority 
of  citizens  and  by  a  majority  of  cantons.  In  1874  the  two 
houses  proposed  in  the  extremely  important  article  89  of 

1  Const,    of  1874,  24,  25,  26,  316,  33,  34,  36,  39,  44,  54,  64.     Quellenbuch, 
648,  555. 


510  REFERENDUM  [chap.  xxv. 

their  scheme,  that  henceforth  whenever  a  new  law  was  passed 
in  the  common  legislature,  any  thirty  thousand  citizens 
or  any  eight  cantons  might  demand  that  the  new  law 
should  be  regarded  as  if  it  were  a  change  in  the  compact, 
and  should  not  take  effect  till  approved  by  a  majority  of 
citizens  and  by  a  majority  of  cantons.  In  connexion  with 
the  proposed  popular  veto  on  new  laws  the  word  referendum 
first  became  famous.  The  word  is  now  used  both  in 
Switzerland  and  in  England  and  probably  everywhere  as 
a  name  for  a  plebiscite  or  popular  vote  on  a  law  that  has 
been  proposed.  The  process  by  which  the  word  got  its 
meaning  is  not  easy  to  trace.  But  it  may  be  observed 
that  in  the  time  before  1798  when  the  ambassador  of  a 
canton  took  a  proposition  ad  referendum  he  also  took  it 
ad  scrutinium,  to  a  decision  by  votes ;  hence  it  might 
easily  happen  that  referendum  was  thought  to  be  equivalent 
to  scrutinium  or  some  such  word.  Ever  since  1885 
Referendum  has  meant  in  Switzerland  a  process  of 
voting:  for  in  a  Swiss  book  published  in  that  year  I 
find  a  distinction  drawn  between  obligatorisches  referendum, 
compulsory  voting  on  a  project,  and  facultativ es  referendum, 
voluntary  voting.1  In  some  cantons  every  citizen  is  com- 
pelled under  penalties  to  give  a  vote  Aye  or  No  on  every 
cantonal  law  that  is  proposed,  and  there  the  referendum 
is  said  to  be  obligatorisch :  on  laws  proposed  by  the 
legislature  common  to  all  the  cantons  and  on  changes  in 
the  compact  among  the  cantons,  each  citizen  may  vote 
or  not  vote  as  he  thinks  fit,  and  thus  in  those  cases  the 
referendum  is  facultative. 

The  new  compact  proposed  in  1874  was  ratified  by  the 
citizens  and  the  cantons.  It  gave  the  common  legislature 
very  large  powers,  but  restrained  it  from  ill  considered 
law-making  by  the  popular  veto,  that  is,  the  referendum. 

1  Erziuger,  Schweizer  Kalech.,  p.  243. 


chap,  xxv.]  POPULAR  INITIATIVE  511 

The  cantonal  governments  were  by  no  means  extinguished, 
but  they  became  decidedly  less  powerful  than  the  common 
government.    The  constitution  worked  smoothly, 

.  Effects  of 

and  any  foreigner  who  between  1874  and  1890  the  new 

chanced  to  be  often  in  Switzerland,  and  to  read   comPact> 

1874. 

some   of  the    annual   reports    of  the   cantonal 
governments  and  to  talk  with  the  Swiss  in  their  homes,  got 
the  impression  that  they  lived  in  a  singularly  well-governed 
country. 

In  the  cantons,  or  at  least  in  nearly  all  of  them,  any 
private  citizen,  if  he  got  enough  backers,  could  propose  a 
new  law  for  his  canton,  and  had  a  good  chance   _ 

'  °  Popular 

of  seeing  it  accepted.  In  Uri,  Schwyz,  and  initiative, 
Unterwalden  he  could  do  it  by  simply  making  1^)I# 
a  proposal  to  his  cantonal  Landsgemeinde  at  its  yearly 
folkmoot:  in  cantons  with  elected  assemblies  a  petition 
signed  by  some  considerable  number  of  private  citizens  was 
an  '  Imperative  Petition '  and  must  receive  the  attention  of 
the  law-making  assembly.  About  1890  it  was  suggested 
that  a  large  number  of  citizens  might  be  allowed  to  make 
an  imperative  petition  proposing  to  the  common  legislature 
a  new  law  binding  on  all  Swiss  citizens.  Switzerland  was 
well  suited  for  making  such  an  experiment,  which  would  in 
a  unitary  nation  be  extremely  hazardous.  Nearly  all  the 
Swiss  had  freehold  property  in  land  or  houses :  employments 
and  interests  were  as  diverse  in  different  cantons  as  the 
physical  surroundings  and  the  climate  :  there  was  no  organ- 
isation of  any  one  class  spreading  through  many  cantons:  and 
the  whole  of  the  Swiss  were  bound  over  in  common  prudence 
to  be  of  good  behaviour  for  fear  of  scaring  away  the  foreign 
holiday-makers  who  came  by  the  million  in  two  months  of 
every  year  to  enjoy  their  mountains.  In  1891  the  suggestion 
was  adopted,  and  since  then  any  fifty  thousand  Swiss 
citizens  can  send  an  imperative  suggestion  to  the  common 


512  THE  SWISS  FEDERATION         [chap.  xxv. 

legislature  or  can  themselves  draft  a  new  law  for  submission 
to  a  vote  of  the  citizens  and  of  the  cantons.  The  introduc- 
tion of  the  Popular  Initiative  has  had  no  striking  results  : 
the  only  proposal  of  great  importance  that  arose  from  it 
before  1900,  a  demand  that  every  Swiss  should  have  a  right 
to  get  from  his  government  adequately  remunerated  employ- 
ment, was  rejected  by  a  large  majority.1  It  seems  however 
possible  that  in  course  of  time  Swiss  citizens  of  different 
cantons  may  by  forming  combinations  to  get  new  laws  passed 
come  to  think  less  of  their  combinations  in  separate  cantons, 
and  thus  breaking  down  some  of  the  barriers  between 
cantons  may  make  the  Swiss  more  like  a  unitary  nation. 

The  Swiss  have  never  formed  two  such  opposing  parties 
for  public  aims  or  for  the  private  business  of  getting  office 
Absence  ■*  nave  Deen  regularly  present  in  America,  ana 
from  Swit-      their  cities  are  governed  with  no  more  corruption 

zerland  of  ....  .  .  _., 

parties  and  than  the  cities  in  a  unitary  nation.  Inere  is  no 
great  cities,  occasion  for  two  great  parties.  In  America  com- 
petition between  the  common  government  and  the  govern- 
ments of  the  states  gave  birth  to  the  two  great  parties :  in 
Switzerland,  if  there  is  any  competition  between  the  central 
government  at  Berne  and  the  cantonal  governments,  it  is 
quickly  allayed  by  the  arbitration  of  a  referendum.  There 
are  some  inconstant  political  groups  in  Switzerland,  but  the 
seven  ministers  who  at  any  one  time  form  the  common 
executive  are  chosen  not  from  one  group  but  from  all.  A 
man  who  has  been  chosen  a  minister  by  one  parliament  is 
usually  chosen  also  by  the  next,  and  the  work  of  being 
a  minister  is  regarded  as  a  permanent  employment:  the 
salary  of  a  minister  is  about  a  tenth  part  of  what  it  is  in 
England.2    The  Swiss  cities  are  saved  from  gross  corruption 

1  See  an  instructive  article  by  Miss  Lilian  Tomn  (Mrs  Knowles),  in  the 
Co-operative  Wholesale  Societies*  Annual  for  1900,  p.  347. 

2  Co-op.  Soc.  Annual,  1900,  p.  340  and  note. 


chap,  xxv.]  GENERAL  COMMENTS  513 

by  their  conditions.  Zurich,  the  largest  of  them,  had  at  the 
last  census  in  1910  less  than  200,000  inhabitants  :  all  cities 
except  Urban  Basel  and  Geneva  are  controlled  by  cantonal 
governments  elected  largely  by  country-folk  :  and  all  the 
cities  are  most  anxious  to  stand  well  in  the  eyes  of  Europe 
because  a  great  part  of  their  earnings  consists  in  payments 
made  by  foreign  visitors  at  their  hotels. 

Of  two  voluntary  junctions  made  in  the  last  half  century 
by  communities  in  Canada  and  in  Australia,  it  will  suffice  to 
say  that  the  communities  which  made  them  were 
not  entirely  independent.     Great  Britain  under-  jUnCtionsof 
took  to  defend  them  against  all  enemies,  and  in   semi-depend- 

m  tit  .  .     .      ent  com- 

return  was  allowed  by  them  to  supervise  their   munitiesare 
compacts  of  junction,  and  to  possess  permanently   made  Wlth 
the  right  of  hearing  through  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee of  its  Privy  Council  appeals  on  some  disputes  that 
can  arise  in   them   from   conflicts  between    their  various 
systems  of  laws.     Hence  the  junctions  of  communities  in 
Canada  and  Australia  were  made  and  are  maintained  with 
singular  ease,  and   can  throw  no  light  on  the  difficulties 
that  always    attend    voluntary   junctions    of  independent 
communities. 

If  we  try  to  get  a  general  view  of  voluntary  junctions  of 
equal  communities,  we  see  that  there  are  three  methods  by 
which  communities  can  agree  to  act  in  concert. 

„.  ,  .  .  ,     .  Kinds  of 

r  irst,  the  communities  or  their  governments  can   compacts 
make  a  mere  alliance.   Secondly,  the  governments   amon ?  com" 

.  J  °  munities. 

can  make  a  compact  of  junction  of  governments. 
Thirdly  the  communities  can  make  a  compact  of  junction 
of  communities.  If  a  mere  alliance  is  made,  no  common 
government  is  authorised,  but  something  like  a  common 
government  may  arise  spontaneously.  If  there  is  a  compact 
for  junction  of  governments  made  by  governments,  there  is 
nominally  at  least  a  common  government,  but  it  has  no 

2k 


514  GENERAL  [chap.  xxv. 

power  to  compel  the  obedience  of  any  individual  in  any- 
particular.  If  there  is  a  compact  for  junction  of  com- 
munities made  by  communities,  there  is  a  common  govern- 
ment endowed  with  power  to  issue  binding  commands  on 
some  important  and  well  denned  matters  to  all  citizens  in 
the  communities  that  make  the  junction. 

Thus  far  our  survey  of  voluntary  junctions  of  equal  com- 
munities only  gives  us  a  classification  of  compacts,  exhibiting 
the  differences  of  their  legal  characters  and  the 
politic  made     various  legal  obligations  which  they  impose  on 
by  compact     ^q  contracting  parties.     It  does  not  give  us,  as 

have  only  a 

legal  not  a      our  view  of  bodies  politic  descended  from  com- 
naturig  pulsory  junctions  of  tribes  gave  us,  types  of  bodies 

politic  looking  like  the  types  that  occur  in  a 
classification  of  natural  objects  :  still  less  does  it  give  us  those 
types  occurring  in  pedigrees  in  a  regular  order.     There  is,  so 
far  as  I  can  judge  from  the  small  number  of  instances  of 
voluntary  compacts  among  communities  that  have  produced 
permanent  groupings  of  communities,  no  regularity  in  the 
characters  of  the  groups  of  men   that   result  from  such 
compacts.     And  reasons  why  no  regularity  can  be  expected 
are  easily  discovered.     Peoples  do  not  make  compacts  to  bind 
them  permanently  till  they  are  much  older,  more  compact, 
and  more  set  in  a  definite  form  than  the  tribes  that  make 
conquests  at  random :  and  the  diversity  of  forms  that  may 
exist  in  peoples  that  make  compacts  is  unlimited.     Besides 
this  the  terms  of  any  compact  may  assume  any  of  the  forms 
that  human  ingenuity  can  invent.     If  the  compact  is  a  mere 
alliance,  alliances  are  not  all  alike  in  their  stipulations :  the 
Swiss  cantons  had  one  form  of  alliance  in  1291,  another  in 
1370  contained  in  the  Pfaffenbrief,  yet  another  in  1393  after 
the  battle  of  Sempach.     Compacts  for  junctions  of  govern- 
ments or  of  communities  could  probably  vary  no  less  than 
alliances.     There  is  little  similarity  between  the  compacts 


chap,  xxv.]  COMMENTS  515 

for  junction  of  governments  made  by  the  Dutch  provinces  in 
1579  and  by  the  American  states  in  1777,  nor  between  the 
compacts  for  junction  of  communities  made  by  the  cities  of 
the  Achaean  League,  by  the  American  states  in  1789,  and 
by  the  Swiss  in  1848  and  again  twenty-six  years  later.  And, 
as  there  is  no  regularity  in  the  forms  of  compacts,  there  is 
none  or  very  little  in  the  forms  of  the  bodies  politic  that 
result  from  them.  We  can  make  a  classification  of  compacts 
according  to  their  legal  characters:  but  any  classification 
that  we  may  make  of  bodies  politic  resulting  from  compacts 
will  have  but  few  of  the  merits  that  belong  to  a  classification 
of  natural  objects. 

Although  we  cannot  make  any  classification   of  bodies 
politic  descended  from  voluntary  junctions  of  equal  com- 
munities that  will  have  the  utility  that  is  found   Permanent 
in  all  sound  classifications  of  natural  obiects,  yet   alliancesand 

voluntary 

a  table  in  which  those  bodies  politic  are  arranged  junctions  of 
according  to  their  legal  characters  will  give  a  "jjjjjjv^ 
compendious  view  of  the  results  of  the  present  arranged 
chapter.     Such  a  table  is  therefore  here  inserted,  thefriegai  ° 
It  will  include  permanent  alliances    of   equal  characters, 
communities,  because,  though  an  alliance  does  not  immedi- 
ately establish  any  body  politic,  it  may  in  the  course  of 
centuries  by  a  natural  and  unconscious  process  generate  a 
body  politic  :  but  it  will  not  take  any  notice  of  the  Achaean 
League  because  the  existing  records  that  tell  us  about  that 
League  do  not  suffice  to  elucidate  its  origination  and  its 
character. 


516 


TABULAR  VIEW 


[chap.  XXV 


PERMANENT  ALLIANCES  AND  VOLUNTARY  JUNC- 
TIONS OF  EQUAL  COMMUNITIES,  AND  BODIES 
POLITIC  RESULTING  FROM  THEM. 

Kinds  of  Compacts  and  kinds  Governments, 

of     resulting     Bodies 
Politic. 

Period     1.  —  [(1)     Permanent    No  common  government. 

alliance  in  Switzerland,  1291- 

1481. 
For  many  generations  no  body 

politic  is  formed.] 


Period  2.  —  Composite  body 
politic  formed  by  useful 
usurpation  on  the  part  of 
ambassadors  (as  in  Switzer- 
land in  1481  A.D.). 

(2)  Junction  of  governments 
made  by  governments  (as  in 
the  Dutch  Netherlands  in 
1579  and  in  America  in  1781). 

Bodies  politic  so  composite  that 
they  scarcely  hold  together. 

(3)  Junctions  of  communities 
made  by  communities  (as  in 
America  in  1789,  and  in 
Switzerland  in  1848  and 
1874). 

Bodies    politic,    composite    but 

holding  together. 
Each    generation    more    nearly 

united  than  the  one  before  it. 


Many  governments. 

Governments  of  separate  com- 
munities strong. 

Common  government— ambassa- 
dors acting  as  a  council. 

Many  governments. 

Governments  of  individual  com- 
munities strong. 

Weak  common  government  not 
endowed  with  any  power  to 
control  individuals. 

Many  co-ordinate  governments. 

The  common  government,  hav- 
ing power  to  command  indi- 
viduals, is  stronger  than  any 
of  the  other  governments. 

The  power  of  the  common 
government  increases  with 
time,  and  the  power  of  the 
othergovernments  diminishes. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

VOLUNTARY  JUNCTIONS   OF   UNEQUAL  BODIES  POLITIC 

Voluntary  junctions  of  unequal  bodies  politic  have 
occurred  only  in  the  two  centuries  most  recently  elapsed. 
Till  1530  junctions  of  peoples  were  made  by  compulsion. 
Since  that  time  compulsory  junctions  of  peoples  have 
become  more  difficult  for  those  who  desired  them,  and 
have  not  been  desired  by  some  who  had  sufficient  force 
to  make  them.  Hence  it  has  come  about  that  when  a 
junction  of  unequal  bodies  politic  is  needed  anywhere  in 
western  or  north  western  Europe  it  is  usually  effected  Avith 
the  assent  either  of  all  persons  comprised  in  the  bodies 
politic  or  of  governments  deemed  at  the  time  of  the  junction 
to  be  qualified  to  express  the  wishes  of  the  persons 
comprised  in  the  bodies  politic.  But  all  this  needs 
some  further  explanation. 

Before   1530   the  sovereigns  who  made  conquests  were 
rulers  of  composite  bodies  politic,  such  as  the  kings  of 
England  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  Since  IS30 
and  from  1481  onward  the  kings  of  France  and  compulsory 
Spain.     As  none  of  them  had  known  the  happi-   have  been 
ness  of  ruling  a  united  people,  they  did  not  care  impeded. 
if  their  dominions  became  more  composite  than  they  were, 
and  they  recklessly  annexed  alien  subjects.    After  1530  the 
rulers  of  France,  Spain,  Austria  still  lusted  after  conquests, 
but  till  1595  they  were  too  much  plagued  with  strife  about 
creeds   to   attempt  external   enterprises.      By   1595,  when 
theological  dissensions  became  less  acute,  they  found  that 

617 


518  MODEEN  JUNCTIONS  [chap.  xxvi. 

the  doctrine  that  there  ought  to  be  a  Balance  of  Power  in 
Europe  had  taken  hold  on  the  minds  of  the  rulers  of 
England,  France,  the  Dutch  Netherlands,  and  the  princip- 
alities in  northern  Germany.  In  1609,  on  the  death  of  a 
duke  of  Cleves  without  direct  heir,  action  founded  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  Balance  baulked  the  desire  of  an  Austrian 
Habsburg  sovereign  to  get  the  duchies  of  Jiilich,  Berg, 
Cleve,  and  Mark :  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War  action  founded 
on  the  same  doctrine  severely  punished  the  larger  predatory 
enterprises  of  a  later  Austrian  sovereign :  and  since  the  end 
of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  the  doctrine  of  the  Balance  has 
put  a  check  on  all  robbers  in  western  Europe  except  the 
singularly  daring  aggressors  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  the 
French  Republicans,  and  Napoleon.  Louis  between  1667 
and  1681,  while  the  interests  of  the  English  were  being 
betrayed  by  their  King  Charles  the  Second,  took  French 
Flanders  and  Franche  Comte  by  force  from  Spain,  and  the 
greater  part  of  Elsass  by  a  mixture  of  fraud  and  force  from 
many  small  German  princes  and  from  the  bishop  and 
citizens  of  Strassburg :  and  though  he  was  defeated  in  two 
wars  by  the  powers  of  Europe,  he  was  permitted  at  the 
treaties  of  Ryswick  in  1697  and  of  Utrecht  in  1713  to  keep 
these  small  gains.  The  French  Republicans  and  Napoleon 
made  incomparably  larger  conquests  of  many  unhealthy 
bodies  politic :  but  within  twenty  years  two  of  the  conquered 
peoples,  the  Spaniards  and  the  Prussians,  after  resolute  and 
admirable  strugglings  became  convalescent,  and  were  aided 
by  the  vigorous  peoples  of  England  and  Russia.  In  1814 
all  the  work  done  by  the  French  Republicans  and  Napoleon 
in  effecting  compulsory  junctions  of  bodies  politic,  except 
some  done  in  Germany  in  1803,  was  undone,  and  in  the 
end  it  had  very  little  direct  result  in  producing  new  and 
permanent  junctions  of  peoples. 

But  there  is  also  another  reason  why  compulsory  junctions 


chap,  xxvl]  •  OF  PEOPLES  519 

of  bodies  politic  have  become  rare.  No  unitary  nation,  if 
it  is  wise,  desires  to  join  any  alien  civilised  people  to 
itself.  Its  health  and  strength  arise  from  its  compulsory 
being  all  one  community.  If  it  joins  an  alien  junctions  not 
civilised  people  to  itself  it  will  be  no  longer  one  unitary 
community  filling  the  whole  of  a  body  politic  nations- 
but  only  a  part,  though  it  may  be  a  predominant  part, 
in  a  composite  body  politic.  If  a  junction  must  take 
place  it  desires  that  the  body  politic  made  by  the  junction 
may  be  as  little  painfully  composite  as  possible:  and  it 
has  better  chances  of  attaining  that  desire  if  the  junction 
is  made  with  the  consent  of  all  the  parties  to  it  than 
if  it  is  made  by  force.  Since  1589  the  English  have  been 
a  unitary  nation:  since  1833  the  more  important  peoples 
of  western  and  north  western  Europe  have  been  unitary 
nations  or  have  had  many  of  the  instincts  felt  by  unitary 
nations.  As  the  peoples  in  Europe  have  approximated  to 
the  character  of  unitary  nations  they  have  felt  a  growing 
aversion  to  the  thought  of  making  junctions  by  compulsion. 
Hence  in  northern  and  north  western  Europe,  where  unitary 
nations  have  since  about  1833  predominated,  compulsory 
junctions  have  gone  out  of  fashion,  and  when  junctions 
have  been  needed  for  the  welfare  of  peoples,  attempts 
have  been  made  to  obtain  for  them  the  consent  either 
of  the  peoples  to  be  joined  together  or  of  governments 
which  could  at  least  pretend  to  speak  for  them. 

Even  in  the  last  two  centuries  junctions  have  been  needed 
for  the  welfare  of  peoples.  Within  those  centuries  there 
have  existed  in  divers  parts  of  western  Europe  junctions 
collections  of  men  either  unprovided  with  any  effected  since 
tolerably  good  government  or  so  small  that  they 
could  not  be  safe  in  isolation.  Such  unlucky  gatherings  of 
men  were  found  in  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  in  large  parts  of 
Italy  and  Germany.      All  of  them  were  relieved  of  their 


520  THE  SCOTS  [chap.  xxvi. 

difficulties  by  junction  with  a  unitary  nation  near  at  hand. 
In  Italy  and  Germany  the  junctions  were  made  with  the 
voluntary  and  deliberate  assent  of  all  parties  concerned :  in 
Scotland  and  in  Ireland  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the 
men  who  gave  assent  to  the  junctions  were  qualified  to 
express  the  wishes  of  all  their  countrymen  and  of  their 
descendants  in  perpetuity. 

The  junction  of  the  Scots  with  the  English  has  already 

been  incidentally  mentioned,  but  some  aspects  of  it  yet 

remain    to    be    noticed.      In    1702,   when    the 

Junction  of.  .  -i  •    i         <• 

the  Scots  junction  was  first  debated,  fully  two  thirds  of 
w^th!;h*!  the  Scots  were  mainly  of  English  race  and 
differed  little  from  the  inhabitants  of  the 
northern  English  counties.  These  Angles  in  Scotland 
owned  nearly  all  the  small  wealth  in  the  country,  but 
even  they  were  not  united.  The  scanty  and  scattered 
Gaelic  clansmen  desired  no  community  of  government 
with  the  Southrons:  each  clan  wished  to  obey  its  own 
chieftain  and  none  other.  Hence  when  the  Southron 
members  of  the  Scots  Parliament  in  1707  gave  their 
assent  to  the  junction  they  certainly  had  little  right  to 
speak  for  all  Scots  then  living,  still  less  to  speak  for 
all  Scots  who  might  live  hereafter.  In  1715  the  Highland 
clansmen  repudiated  the  assent  that  had  been  given  to 
the  junction  with  England:  in  1745  the  clansmen  and 
the  Southrons  did  the  like,  and  marched  together  as  far 
as  Derby  in  the  hope  of  sending  the  King  of  England 
back  to  Hanover,  and  setting  a  Scottish  Stuart  in  his 
place.  Yet  the  Scots,  after  they  had  been  defeated  by 
the  English  at  Culloden,  gradually  perceived,  even  though 
the  English  governments  cared  but  little  for  their  welfare, 
that  they  gained  very  largely  in  prosperity  through  their 
junction  with  the  English.  By  1807,  when  union  of 
Scotland   with    England   had    subsisted   a   hundred   years, 


chap,  xxvi.]  THE  IRISH  521 

the  English  began  to  hope  that  in  about  two  generations 
there  might  be  a  people  of  Scots  reconciled  with  their 
neighbours  to  the  south  of  them.  Their  hopes  came 
true  sooner  than  then  seemed  likely,  and  since  about  1830 
the  Scots  are  no  less  resolute  than  the  English  in  advancing 
the  interests  of  Great  Britain. 

In  Ireland  in  1798  there  was  less  semblance  of  a  body 
politic  than  there  had  been  in  Scotland  a  century  earlier. 
The  settlements  in  the  six  north  eastern  counties 
of  Ulster,  all  planted  at  once  in  the  reign  of  the  Irish 
James    the    First,   formed    a    tolerably   united  wl*hGreat 

.  Britain. 

community :  the  inhabitants  of  the  middle,  the 
west,  and  the  south  of  the  island  were  little  groups  of 
tenants  arranged  in  Baronies  and  Half  Baronies,  and  paying 
rent  to  English  landlords  of  whom  the  greater  part  were 
non-resident.  In  1800,  when  the  civil  war  in  Ireland  had 
been  quelled,  it  might  probably  have  been  best  for  the 
Irish  if  Cornwallis,  the  commander  under  the  British 
government,  had  been  provided  with  an  army  strong 
enough  to  keep  control  over  the  English  and  the  Irish 
factions  in  Ireland,  and  if  no  locality  in  Ireland  had 
been  allowed  to  elect  a  member  of  any  parliament  either 
in  Ireland  or  in  England,  till  its  inhabitants  had  shown 
that  in  elections  they  would  not  submit  to  dictation  from 
any  one.  But  soldiers  were  grievously  needed  for  service 
on  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  Pitt  took  the  easier 
course  of  buying  the  votes  of  the  Englishmen  who  sat  as 
Peers  in  the  Irish  Parliament  and  the  influence  of  the 
boroughmongers  who  nominated  the  Irish  House  of 
Commons,  and  then  allowing  the  two  houses  of  the 
Irish  Parliament  to  pretend  that  they  assented  on  behalf 
of  the  disunited  Irish,  who  being  disunited  had  no  will 
of  their  own,  to  a  junction  with  Great  Britain.  After 
1832,    when    great    numbers    of    Irishmen    took    part    in 


522  THE  IRISH  [chap.  xxvi. 

elections  of  members  of  the  United  Parliament  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  some  members  who  sat  for  consti- 
tuencies in  Ireland  began  under  the  lead  of  Daniel 
O'Connell  to  repudiate  the  contract  of  junction  said  to 
have  been  made  a  generation  earlier,  exactly  as  the  Scots 
in  the  eighteenth  century  had  repudiated  the  junction 
said  to  have  been  made  by  their  fathers:  but  the  Irish 
did  not  imitate  the  Scots  in  attempting  rebellion  to  acquire 
independence.  From  1867  onward  the  Cabinets  and 
Parliaments  of  the  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  paid  constant  attention  to  the  welfare  of  the 
Irish.  By  1906  they  had  pledged  British  credit  on  several 
occasions  in  large  amounts,  and  had  thereby  established 
a  large  class  of  landowning  farmers  and  peasants  throughout 
Ireland.  As  the  Irish  by  that  time  enjoyed  far  greater 
prosperity  than  any  of  their  forefathers,  there  was  reason 
to  hope  that  a  generation  of  Irishmen  soon  to  come  might 
be  convinced  that  their  junction  with  Great  Britain  brought 
them  advantages  which  they  could  not  otherwise  obtain. 

But  in  1886,  1895,  1912,  1913,  proposals  were  made  in 
the  Parliament  at  Westminster  to  abandon  the  policy  of 
maintaining  a  common  government  for  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland.  The  first  proposal  was  rejected  by  the  Commons, 
and  the  second  by  the  Lords :  what  has  happened  to  the 
second  and  third  cannot  be  stated  briefly,  because  since  1911 
such  words  as  Parliament,  Minister,  Government  have  lost 
their  old  meanings  for  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  and 
can  no  longer  be  employed  without  ambiguity  or  difficult 
discussions  to  discover  what  they  may  imply.1 

Italy  from  1850  to  1858  was  the  abode  of  nine  bodies 
politic.  The  most  important  though  not  the  largest  of  them 
lived  in  Pie'mont  and  the  Genoese  territory,  and  had  Victor 
Emmanuel  for  its  king.     Much  larger   than   Piemont  and 

1  Written  in  February  1914. 


chap,  xxvi.]  ITALY  523 

Genoa  were  Lombardy  with  Venetia  ruled  by  the  Emperor 
of   Austria,   the  States   of    the   Church,   the  kingdom   of 
Naples :  of  smaller  size  were  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
Tuscany,  and  the  Duchies  of  Parma,  Modena,   1858:' (i) 
Carrara,  and    Lucca.     The   Piemontese,   as   we   Pi6mont 

and  Genoa. 

have  already  seen,  had  been  for  two  centuries  a 
united  people.  Till  1848  their  rulers  had  been  despots,  but 
native  despots,  usually  respecting  their  subjects  and  respected 
by  them.  The  Genoese  had  been  annexed  to  the  Piemontese 
in  1814  by  the  Congress  of  Vienna.  In  1848  the  united 
people  of  Piemont  and  Genoa  had  received  from  their  king 
Carlo  Alberto  a  constitution  which  gave  them  ministers  and 
a  parliament.  They  maintained  a  small  but  vigorous  native 
army  which  fought  with  desperate  valour  but  with  ill 
success  in  1849  as  defender  of  the  Italian  peoples  against 
the  Austrians.  When  the  war  of  1849  ended  in  their 
disastrous  defeat  at  Novara,  their  honest  king  Victor 
Emmanuel  let  them  keep  their  constitution,  though  the 
Austrians  offered  him  favours  if  he  would  abolish  it.  In 
1854  they  raised  a  new  army  in  the  place  of  that  which  they 
had  lost,  were  admitted  to  alliance  with  the  French  and  the 
English  in  their  war  against  the  Russians,  and  learned  with 
pride  that  their  army  had  earned  distinction  at  the  battle  of 
the  Tchernaya.  In  1858  they  had  a  better  army  than  ever 
before,  and  they  trusted  their  ruler  Victor  Emmanuel  and 
his  wise  adviser  Cavour. 

All  peoples  in   Italy  except  the  inhabitants  of  Piemont 
and  Genoa  were  helpless.     Tuscany  indeed  was  decently 
governed  by  an  Austrian  prince,  but  he  was  a 
foreigner    and    not    beloved.       Lombardy    and    ^58  •  (2)  the 
Venetia  were    under  the  heavy  hand    of   the   other  Italian 

peoples. 

government    at    Vienna:    Naples,  Parma,    and 

Modena  were  under  despots,  detested  by  all  their  subjects 

except  a  few  whom  they  had  corrupted :   in  the  States  of 


524  LOUIS  NAPOLEON  [chap.  xxvi. 

the  Church  Pope  Pius  the  Ninth  had  been  till  1849 
merciful,  but  since  then  unkind :  Carrara,  appended  by 
marriage  to  Modena,  and  Lucca  were  too  insignificant  to 
call  for  further  notice.  All  the  despots  in  Italy  were  upheld 
by  Austria,  and  the  chief  aim  of  nearly  all  intelligent 
Italians  was  to  expel  the  Austrians  from  Lombardy  and 
Venetia,  and  afterwards  to  found  in  some  form  an  Italian 
nation. 

Louis  Napoleon,  Emperor  of  the  French,  knew  that  his 
subjects  in  France  had  permitted  him  in   1851  to   seize 

absolute  power  over  them  only  in  the  hope  that 
Napoleon  he  might  do  something  Napoleonic  in  getting 
^j.^6  them  glory  and  gain :  and  he  knew  also  that  if 

peoples,  their  hope  were  disappointed  his  reign  would 

end.  Hence  he  habitually  sought  whom  he 
might  attack.  In  1858  the  Austrians  in  Italy  were 
more  vulnerable  than  any  other  Europeans,  because  all 
civilised  peoples  looked  on  their  harsh  government  there 
with  dislike.  Thus  an  attack  on  them  could  yield  glory  to 
the  French  :  but  it  could  not  directly  yield  gain,  because  the 
Austrians  had  nothing  that  the  French  cared  to  acquire. 
But  Piemont,  the  resolute  enemy  of  the  Austrians,  had 
Savoy  and  Nice,  both  valuable  to  the  French.  Louis 
Napoleon  in  July  1858  contrived  to  obtain  prospects  of 
gain  as  well  as  glory.  Meeting  Cavour  the  Piemontese 
statesman  at  Plombieres,  a  place  with  a  water-cure  near 
Epinal  and  the  Vosges  mountains,  he  made  with  him  some 
bargain  which  was  not  written  down,  and  therefore  cannot 
be  precisely  defined :  mention  was  made  in  it  undoubtedly 
of  Savoy,  and  possibly  also  of  Nice.  In  consequence  of  the 
bargain  France  and  Piemont  acted  together  as  allies  in 
1859  in  a  war  against  Austria.  As  the  Austrians  were  beaten 
in  several  battles,  of  which  Magenta  and  Solferino  were  the 
most  conspicuous,  all  the  peoples  in  Italy  between  the  Po 


chap,  xxvi.]  AND  THE  ITALIANS  525 

and  Rome  declared  in  favour  of  the  Pieinontese,  and 
frightened  away  the  despots  who  had  been  ruling  them. 
Their  action  was  likely  to  make  a  strong  and  united  north 
Italian  kingdom.  Louis  Napoleon  desired  not  that  the 
Italians  should  be  strong  but  that  they  should  be  dependent 
on  his  favour.  Accordingly  on  July  6,  1859,  without  the 
knowledge  of  his  ally  Victor  Emmanuel,  he  made  peace  at 
Villafranca  with  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  taking  from  him 
only  Lombardy  which  he  promised  to  cede  to  Victor 
Emmanuel,  and  agreeing  that  the  Austrians  should  keep 
Venetia,  and  might  if  they  could  re-establish  the  petty 
despots  in  central  Italy. 

At  the  preliminaries  of  Villafranca  Louis  Napoleon  smote 
his  ally  Victor  Emmanuel  a  foul  stab  in  the  back.  The 
Piemontese  were  for  a  moment  dismayed :  voluntary 
Cavour  resigned  office  and  went  to  Switzerland,  junction  of 
But  the  peoples  of  central  Italy  acted  for  them-  peoples, 
selves  by  voting  either  in  plebiscites  or  in  hastily  l859-6i. 
made  parliaments  that  they  would  come  under  the  govern- 
ment of  Victor  Emmanuel.  Sicily  and  Naples  were  freed 
from  their  Bourbon  despot  by  Garibaldi  and  his  volunteers 
with  the  countenance  of  a  Piemontese  army,  led  by  Victor 
Emmanuel  in  person,  and  they  also  willingly  joined  in  the 
Italian  kingdom.  Between  1859  and  1861  Victor  Emmanuel 
received  the  allegiance  of  all  the  Italian  peoples  except  the 
Venetians  and  the  inhabitants  of  a  small  district  around 
Rome :  he  had  to  surrender  to  Louis  Napoleon  only  Savoy 
and  Nice  which  are  geographically  outside  Italy.  In  1866, 
when  the  Austrians  had  been  defeated  by  the  peoples  of 
northern  Germany  at  Sadowa,  the  Venetians  became  free, 
and  by  plebiscite  voted  their  inclusion  in  the  kingdom  of 
Italy,  and  lastly  in  1870  when  Louis  Napoleon  had  been 
defeated  by  the  Germans  and  had  abdicated,  there  was  no 
French  garrison  in  the  reduced  States  of  the  Church  to 


526  THE  JUNCTION  [chap.  xxvi. 

support  the  despotic  government  of  the  Pope,  and  Victor 
Emmanuel  reigned  in  Rome  as  constitutional  sovereign  of 
all  the  Italians. 

The  junction  of  the  Italian   peoples,   though  perfectly 

voluntary,    was    conspicuously    a    junction    of    unequals. 

Piemont  alone  was  healthy  and  strong,  with  a 

Junction  of  .,  ,  _    .  .  .  .  1 

the  Italian  well-loved  king,  a  vigorous  native  army,  a  good 
peoples:         government,  a  wise  statesman,  and  a  satisfactory 

comments.  .  * 

constitution.    The  other  peoples,  when  they  had 
frightened  away  their  despots,  were  without  rulers,  without 
armies,  without  strength.     If  they  had   had  established 
governments  they  might  have  said  that  though  they  would 
join    with  Piemont   in    founding  a  new   common  govern- 
ment for  defence  against  the  Austrians  their  established 
governments  must   retain  a  good  part  of   their  powers: 
as    they   had    no    governments    or    only  governments   of 
yesterday,  no  course  lay  open  to  them  except  to  ask  to 
become  subjects  of  the  Piemontese  king,  who  would  hence- 
forth be  the  Italian  king,  and  to  share  in  the  enjoyment  of 
the  good  methods  of  government  which  the  Piemontese 
had  brought  into  being.     Thus  the  character  of  the  govern- 
ment under  which  the  Italian  peoples  were  to  live  when 
joined  together  was  settled  solely  by  the  Piemontese,  the 
strongest  of  the  peoples,  and  by  Victor  Emmanuel  the 
Piemontese  king.      The  Piemontese  and  their  king  offered 
their    own    form  of   government   and  the  other    peoples 
accepted  it.     The  results  of  the  junction  have  been  satis- 
factory.     It  cannot  be  said  that  all  the  Italians  at  once 
formed  a  united  people.     Brigands  in  the  parts  that  had 
been  misgoverned  from  Naples  could  not  be  easily  reduced 
to  order.     Ministers  ruling  in  Italy  thought  it  necessary  to 
create  a  huge  privileged  order  of  petty  servants  of  the 
government   who   did  little  to   earn   their   paltry  salaries 
except  vote  and  get  votes  for  the  ministers :  consequently 


chap,  xxvi.]        OF  THE  ITALIAN  PEOPLES  527 

till  recently  the  expenditure  usually  exceeded  the  revenue. 
Since  however  the  Italians  finished  their  successful  war 
against  the  Turks  in  Tripoli  and  Cyrenaica  there  has  been 
a  marked  improvement,  and  recently  it  was  announced 
to  the  surprise  of  every  one  that  the  Italian  Minister  of 
Finance  had  ended  a  year  with  a  surplus  of  revenue  over 
expenditure. 

In  Germany,  on  the  death  in  1250  of  the  Kaiser  Frederic 
the  Second,  the  many  dukes  and  princes  became  independ- 
ent.    In  1273  the  seven  electors  chose  Rudolf  of  _.    _ 

The  German 

Habsburg  to  the  title  of  Kaiser,  and  from  thence-  peoples, 
forward  till  1493  they  chose  Kaisers  from  any  I2S°"I493. 
of  the  German  princely  families  at  pleasure.  Whether 
during  the  period  from  1273  to  1493  there  was  any  trace  of 
a  common  government  for  all  the  Germans  it  is  hard  to 
decide.  Certainly  a  prince  who  allowed  himself  to  be  named 
Kaiser  often  found  himself  weaker  after  his  election  than  he 
had  been  before:  but  there  was  a  useful  tradition  that  if 
any  prince  made  an  outrageous  war  against  a  neighbour  he 
would  have  to  fight  with  the  Kaiser  and  with  some  of  the 
strongest  sovereigns  in  the  diet  or  assembly  of  princes.  As 
the  diets  and  the  Kaisers  thus  maintained  a  rude  Balance 
of  Power,  reckless  wars  were  unusual.  The  princes  had 
more  security  than  they  would  have  had  without  diets  and 
without  Kaisers,  and  each  of  them,  with  a  Landtag  for  his 
own  dominions  to  grant  him  taxes,  could  rule  quietly  over  a 
fairly  united  community. 

After  1493  it  became  a  settled  practice  that  only  Austrian 
Habsburgs  should  be  chosen  as  Kaisers,  and  then  changes 
set  in.      Maximilian,  King  of  the  Romans  and  _.    G 
Kaiser  designate,   tried  with    little    success  to  peoples, 
make  a  common  government  for  all  the  German   I493"l642- 
peoples.     His  grandson   Charles   the  Fifth,  whom  I  have 
hitherto  called  Charles  of  Habsburg,  took  advaDtage  of  the 


528  PRUSSIA  [chap.  xxvi. 

immense  resources  of  his  inherited  dominions,  and  of  the 
strife  among  rival  theological  creeds,  to  usurp  for  a  few  years 
uncontrolled  authority  over  the  princes:  during  their 
defence  against  him  and  their  contests  waged  on  behalf  of 
their  creeds  the  princes  with  the  assent  of  their  subjects 
took  despotic  power,  and  Landtage  ceased  to  meet,  or  became 
impotent.  Between  1618  and  1637  a  later  Habsburg, 
Ferdinand  the  Second,  tried  to  become  master  of  all  the 
princes,  mainly  by  the  atrocious  method  of  hiring  soldiers 
of  fortune  and  encouraging  them  to  enrich  themselves  by 
plundering  and  murdering  his  opponents :  but  in  his  days 
and  in  the  days  of  his  son  Ferdinand  the  Third  the  attempt 
was  defeated  by  the  princes  with  the  aid  of  the  Swedes  and 
the  French.  When  peace  was  made  in  1648  at  Minister 
and  Osnabrtick  in  Westphalia,  all  the  princes  became 
independent :  it  was  said  that  a  diet  continued  to  exist,  but 
it  was  only  a  congress  of  ambassadors,  sitting  from  1673  in 
permanence  at  Regensburg  on  the  Danube,  in  which  every 
ambassador  was  strictly  bound  by  the  instructions  he  had 
received  from  the  prince  who  employed  him. 

Though  the  peoples  of  Germany  and  their  princes  became 
independent  at  the  treaties  of  Westphalia,  they  and  their 
_.     .      ,      descendants  for  the  next  century  and  a  half  were 

The  rise  of  * 

Prussia,  miserably   weakened  by   the  devastations    and 

1648-1814.  sufferings  brought  on  them  by  Ferdinand  the 
Second  of  Austria.  The  least  exhausted  were  the  Branden- 
burgers.  Between  1648  and  1688  under  their  Great  Elector 
they  annexed  several  peoples  as  large  as  themselves,  and 
between  1740  and  1762  their  king  Frederick  the  Great 
succeeded  in  wresting  Silesia  from  Austria.1  But  after  1762 
Prussia  and  Austria  still  stood  facing  one  another  as  jealous 
rivals  nearly  equal  in  power,  and  therefore  there  could  be  no 
thought  of  setting  up  a  common  government  for  the  three 

1  See  pp.  434,  435. 


chap,  xxvi.]    AND  THE  LESSEE  GERMAN  PEOPLES     529 

or  four  hundred  separate  peoples  in  Germany.     The  most 
intelligent  of  the  Germans,  being  precluded  from  all  political 
activity,  betook  themselves  to  thinking,  and,  by  founding  a 
literature  and  schools  of  metaphysical  philosophy  common 
to  all  Germans,  did  more  to  ensure  the  eventual  junction  of 
the  German  peoples  than  any  of  the  princes  under  whom 
they  lived.1     Between  1801  and  1807  Napoleon  Buonaparte, 
first  as  consul  and  afterwards  as  emperor,  got  a  mastery  over 
all  the  Germans.    In  1803  he  extinguished  a  great  multitude 
of  the  most  minute  principalities   both   ecclesiastical  and 
secular,  and   annexed   them   to   neighbours.      In   1806  he 
formed  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.     After  1807  the 
people  of  Brandenburg-Prussia  incurred  his  especial  hatred 
because  they  loved  one  another  and  were  ready  to  die  for 
their  common  weal:   but   though  they  were  treated  with 
exceptional  severity,  they  would  not  be  daunted,  and  from 
1812  onward  they  did  far  more  than  any  other  German 
people  towards  breaking  the  power  of  the  general  oppressor.2 
After  1814  it  became  manifest  that,  if  ever  the  German 
peoples   set  up   a  common  government,  they  must  do  it 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Prussians  or  of  a  Prussian  king. 
Ever  since  the  sixteenth  century  the  German  peoples  had 
been  glad  to  have  despotic  rulers  to  protect  them.     Hence 
it  followed  that  in   1814   the  peoples  had   no   Germany, 
capacity  of   acting    for    themselves,  and    they   i8i4-i848- 
could  not  complain  because  their  relations  to  each  other 
were  settled  for  them  by  their  princes  and  by  the  Powers 
of  Europe  in  Congress  at  Vienna.     Stein  the  great  German 
statesman  and  patriot  had  long  desired  that  there  might  be 
an  effective  common  government  for  all  the  Germans  both 
to  secure  them  against  attack  from  outside,  and  to  prevent 
the  lesser  despots  from   being  oppressors.      But  Austria, 

1  Ernest  Denis,  La  Fondation  de  P Empire  Allemand,  p.  3. 

2  Seeley,  Life  and  Times  of  Stein. 

2l 


530  UNION  DESIRED  [chap.  xxvi. 

guided  by  Metternich,  and  the  German  despots  generally, 
desired  to  have  as  little  as  possible  of  common  government, 
and  they  prevailed  with  the  Congress  to  let  them  have  only 
a  Deutscher  Bund,  a  German  League,  with  no  common 
organ  beyond  a  powerless  congress  of  ambassadors  strictly 
bound  by  instructions  from  their  princes.  In  this  congress, 
which  sat  at  Frankfurt  on  the  Main,  Austria  had  the 
presidency  and  the  chief  influence,  and  Metternich,  the 
chief  minister  of  Austria,  set  himself  resolutely  to  oppose 
all  innovations  and  attempts  at  improvement,  all  of  which 
he  deemed  revolutionary.  But  as  the  doctrine  of  the 
Balance  of  Power  held  sway  in  Europe,  and  there  were  no 
more  wars  for  getting  territory,  the  petty  despots  were  no 
longer  needed  for  the  safety  of  their  subjects.  The  German 
peoples  began  to  come  to  life,  and  between  1814  and  1848 
the  rulers  of  Bavaria,  Baden,  Wurtemberg,  the  two  Hesses, 
Hanover  and  Saxony,  found  it  convenient  to  permit  their 
peoples  to  elect  parliaments,  which,  though  they  had  little 
authority,  were  at  any  rate  free  to  deliberate.  Between 
1818  and  1834  the  governments  of  three  quarters  of  the 
Germans  joined  in  a  Zollverein,  or  union  for  customs  duties. 
About  the  same  time  railways  were  made  in  Germany,  and 
the  German  peoples  saw  how  much  had  been  gained  by  the 
abolition  of  customs  houses  at  every  internal  frontier,  and 
how  much  more  gain  of  the  same  sort  would  accrue  to 
them  if  their  princes  would  agree  to  set  up  a  common 
government.1 

At  the  end  of  February  1848  the  Parisians  with  great  ease 
expelled  their  king,  Louis  Philippe.  In  imitation  of  their 
enterprise  discontented  peoples  everywhere  in  Europe  began 
insurrections  to  constrain  their  rulers.     The  Prussians,  who 

1  For  the  Congress  of  Vienna  see  Scholl,  Histoire  abregde  des  Traitts  dt 
Paix,  ch.  41,  sect.  5 ;  Gervinus,  Geschichte  des  Neunzehnten  Jahrhunderts, 
vol.  1.  For  the  history  1814-1848  Ernest  Denis,  La  Fondation  de  V Empire 
Allematid,  Introduction,  and  Fyfle,  Modern  Europe,  ch.  12. 


chap,  xxvi.]        BY  THE  GERMAN  PEOPLES  531 

occupied  fully  half  of  Germany  that  was  not  Austrian,  in 
March  1848  drove  their  king  to  promise  a  parliament  and  a 
constitution.      The  Austrians  of  Austria  proper  . 

r     r       Insurrections, 

did  the  like  at  Vienna.  The  German  peoples  Feb.-june 
desired  to  have  a  parliament  common  to  all  of  :  4  ' 
them  in  the  hope  that  such  a  parliament  would  devise 
some  compact  in  which  the  peoples  could  join  together, 
and  would  exercise  some  control  over  the  kings  of  the 
several  German  peoples :  the  kingly  governments  in 
Germany,  being  cowed  by  the  insurrections  in  Berlin 
and  Vienna,  permitted  the  parliament  to  be  elected,  and 
in  May  1848  it  met  at  Frankfurt.  The  Austrian  govern- 
ment was  crippled  by  rebellions  in  Lombardy  and  in 
Bohemia,  and  till  June  1848  the  peoples  seemed  strong 
enough  to  exact  and  obtain  all  that  they  could  desire. 

But  in  June  1848  the  Austrians  overpowered  the 
Bohemians  at  Prague,  and  by  March  1849  had  crushed 
the  Lombards  and  their  Piemontese  allies  at  small  results 
Novara.     In  March  1849  the  Frankfurt  parlia-  ?fthe 

_~  ,  insurrections, 

ment  of  all  the  Germans  proposed  that  the  June  1848- 
German  peoples  should  join  together,  and  have  l85°* 
a  compact  or  constitution  which  gave  only  limited  powers 
to  kings:  and  they  offered  to  give  the  king  of  Prussia  a 
hegemony  or  leadership  of  the  German  peoples  if  he 
would  accept  their  constitution.  The  Prussian  king, 
acting  under  pressure  from  Austria,  declined  the  offer, 
and  in  June  1848  by  forbidding  any  deputies  from  his 
dominions  to  attend  at  Frankfurt  brought  about  the 
dispersion  of  the  common  parliament:  but  nearly  at  the 
same  time  he  tried  to  join  the  German  peoples  under 
his  hegemony  with  such  a  constitution  as  he  liked. 
Meanwhile  the  Austrian  government  had  to  fight  against 
a  rebellion  of  the  Hungarians,  who  under  Kossuth  claimed 
to  be  independent :  it  called  in  the  aid  of  a  Russian  army 


532  BISMARCK  [chap.  xxvi. 

and  by  August  1849  was  master  of  all  its  rebels.  From 
that  time  for  ten  years  Austria  was  the  strong  state  in 
central  Europe.  In  1850  at  a  convention  signed  at  Olmiitz 
in  Moravia  it  compelled  the  king  of  Prussia  formally  to 
undertake  not  to  attempt  to  make  a  junction  of  German 
peoples  under  his  hegemony  :  the  Germans  thereupon  went 
back  to  the  condition  of  a  Deutscher  Bund  as  established 
by  the  Congress  of  Vienna.  Nothing  resulted  in  Germany 
from  the  risings  of  1848  except  the  establishment  for 
Prussia  of  a  parliament,  which  having  little  experience 
had  little  influence.  But  in  1851  Otto  von  Bismarck, 
belonging  to  an  old  noble  family  which  had  taken  its 
origin  in  Brandenburg  but  had  migrated  to  a  country  seat 
near  Stettin  in  Prussian  Pomerania,  having  already  made 
his  mark  in  a  parliament  at  Berlin,  was  appointed  at 
thirty  six  years  of  age  to  be  Prussian  ambassador  at  the 
congress  of  German  ambassadors  at  Frankfurt.  In  that 
post  he  remained  till  1857  and  employed  himself  in 
studying  the  relations  among  the  German  princes  and 
in  meditating  how  those  relations  could  be  modified  to 
the  advantage  of  Prussia.1 

In  1859  Austria  was  weakened  by  the  defeats  inflicted  on 

it  at  Magenta  and  Solferino  by  Louis  Napoleon  and  the 

Piemontese.     The  ruler   of  Prussia  was   Prince 

Minister         Wilhelm,   regent  from   1857   for  his  incapable 

President  of    brother,  and  from  January  1861  king  in  his  own 

Prussia,  1862.      .  . 

right.  Wilhelm  saw  that  now  in  the  weakness 
of  Austria  he  had  an  opportunity  of  tearing  up  the 
humiliating  convention  of  Olmiitz,  and  that  if  he  did  not 
exert  himself  promptly  he  might  in  a  few  years  have  to 
defend  Prussia  against  France  and  Austria  acting  in  concert 
as  aggressors.  Hence  in  1860  he  asked  the  Prussian 
parliament  for  a  stronger  army.     The  parliament  gave  him 

1  VySe,  Modern  Europe,  ch.  20  ;  .7.  W.  Headlam,  Bixmarck,  ch.  5. 


chap,  xxvi.]  BISMARCK  533 

nothing,  and  in  September  1862  Wilhelm  in  defiance  of 
the  parliament  appointed  Bismarck  as  his  Minister  President 
and  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs.1 

When  Bismarck  took  office  as  minister,  he  had  already 
foreseen   that  Prussia  would   never   be  strong   till   it   had 
expelled  Austria  from  the  congress  of  German 
ambassadors,  and  that  it  would   have  to   fight  between 
Austria  and  might  need  to  fight  Louis  Napoleon  Prussia  and 

mi  p  «         •  i  Austria,  1866. 

afterwards.  Therefore  Prussia  must  have  a 
strong  army.  The  Prussian  parliament  still  refused  to 
sanction  expenditure  on  more  soldiers:  Bismarck  rudely 
violated  the  Prussian  constitution  of  1850  and  spent  the 
revenue  as  he  liked.  In  1864  public  excitement  in 
Germany  compelled  him  against  his  desire  to  fight  Denmark 
about  the  duchies  of  Schleswig  and  Holstein:  in  the  war 
he  cleverly  managed  that  his  sole  co-adjutor  should  be 
Austria.  Prussia  and  Austria  conquered  the  two  duchies, 
and  then  Bismarck  disagreed  with  Austria  about  the 
disposal  of  them.  In  1866  Bismarck  on  April  9,  strongly 
desiring  that  Austria  might  begin  a  war  against  Prussia 
which  might  seem  aggressive,  gave  provocation  to  the 
Austrian  government  by  declaring  to  the  ambassadors  of 
the  German  states  at  Frankfurt  that  he  desired  to  have 
a  common  government  for  Germany,  and  by  clearly 
indicating  that  he  intended  Prussia  to  have  the  hegemony.2 
Austria  on  June  11  replied  by  proposing  to  the  ambassadors 
measures  in  regard  to  Schleswig  and  Holstein  which  Prussia 
could  not  tolerate.3  The  Austrian  proposal  was  carried  by 
nine  votes  against  six,  Prussia  asserting  that  the  measures 
proposed  lay  outside  the  powers  conceded  to  the  ambassadors 
in  the  Deutscher  Bund  and  refusing  to  vote.     The  eight 

1  Headlam,  Iiiamarck,  ch.  6;  Fyffe,  Modern  Europe,  p.  914. 

2  Text  of  the  declaration  in  Hahn,  Filrst  Bismarck,  1.  383-387  ;  Cambridge 
Mod.  TTixt.,  11.  449. 

3  Hahn,  1.  450. 


534        UNION  OF  THE  GERMAN  PEOPLES     [chap.  xxvi. 

who  voted  with  Austria  were  three  states  to  the  south  of 
the  Main,  and  in  northern  Germany  Hanover,  Hesse  Cassel, 
Nassau,  Saxony,  and  a  group  of  minute  principalities  in 
Thuringia  of  which  Reuss  is  the  best  known.1  Bismarck 
officially  informed  Hanover,  Saxony,  and  Hesse  Cassel 
that  unless  they  became  allies  of  Prussia  they  would  be 
treated  as  its  enemies.2  Hanover  and  Hesse  Cassel  tried 
to  defend  themselves  in  arms  but  were  forcibly  annexed 
to  Prussia :  Saxony  sent  its  army  into  Bohemia  to  help  the 
Austrians  who  were  also  aided  by  forces  from  three  states 
south  of  the  Main.  On  July  3,  1866,  Prussia,  scarcely  aided 
by  forces  from  any  German  state  except  Mecklenburg 
Schwerin,  decisively  defeated  the  armies  of  its  enemies 
between  Koniggratz  and  Sadowa  in  Bohemia. 

After  the  victory  Bismarck  succeeded  in  hindering  Louis 

Napoleon   from   interfering,  and   then   made  the  German 

states  to  the  north  of  the  Main  understand  that 

German  ^  was  necessary  for  them  to  join  in  a  compact 

Federation,     for  setting  up   a  central   government   for   the 

1866:  large  6        r  .  5 

powers  of  management  of  their  common  concerns  under 
the  common    t]ie   hegemony   of   the   king    of    Prussia:     the 

government.  °  "  ° 

governments  consented  that  some  compact  should 
be  made.  Bismarck  himself  on  December  22, 1866,  drew  up 
the  terms  of  the  compact.3  Prussia,  whose  possessions  in 
Germany  now  included  Holstein,  Hanover,  Hesse  Cassel, 
and  Nassau,  had  fully  three  quarters  of  the  population 
that  would  be  under  the  common  government.  Hence 
Bismarck  gave  the  common  government  very  large  powers, 
foreseeing  that  those  powers  would  in  general  be  wielded 
by  Prussia.  The  common  government  was  to  have  all  the 
powers  possessed  by  the  federal  government  in  America 
and  others  of  wide  scope  besides.      It  was  to  define  and 

1  Hahn,  1.  452.  2  Ibid.,  1.  458-461. 

s  Headlam,  Bismarck,  292. 


chap,  xxvi.]  EFFECTED  535 

enforce  the  obligations  of  every  German  subject  in  regard 
to  military  service,  to  make  the  civil  and  criminal  law, 
including  all  laws  relating  to  meetings  and  newspapers,  to 
make  war  and  peace,  and  lastly  to  enact  any  alteration  in  the 
constitution  or  compact  of  junction  of  the  states  provided 
that  the  alteration  was  approved  (1)  by  a  simple  majority 
of  those  voting  in  the  lower  house,  the  Reichstag,  which  was 
elected  by  the  population  at  large,  and  (2)  by  two  thirds 
of  the  upper  house,  the  Bundesrath,  whose  votes  were 
controlled  by  the  governments  of  the  states  that  joined 
together  to  set  up  the  common  government.1 

In  planning  the  structure  of  the  common  government 
Bismarck  was  guided  by  his  experience.  Between  1851  and 
1857,  while  he  was  Prussian  envoy  at  Frankfurt,   „x 

J  Structure  of 

he  had  found  that  both  the  ambassadors  assembled  the  common 
there  and  the  governments  that  employed  them  &overnment- 
knew  their  own  business  and  faithfully  fulfilled  their  under- 
takings : 2  and  this  was  not  surprising  since  in  most  cases  a 
lesser  German  state  either  was  a  small  unitary  nation  three 
or  four  centuries  old,  or  at  least  had  a  small  unitary  nation 
as  its  nucleus.  Bismarck  resolved  to  take  the  congress  of 
ambassadors  as  it  stood  and  to  turn  it  into  a  Bundesrath, 
an  upper  house  of  legislature,3  in  which  each  state  in  the 
federation  was  to  have  a  certain  number  of  votes,  all  the 
votes  of  each  state  being  given  at  a  division  collectively  and 
to  the  same  purport.4  For  German  parliaments  his  memories 
of  the  Prussian  parliament  from  1862  to  1866  gave  him  a 
hearty  contempt.  For  the  kingly  dignity  in  Prussia  he  felt 
profound  veneration.  Hence  the  king  of  Prussia  was  to 
have  the  chief  power,  the  Bundesrath  to  come  next,  and  the 

1  Dareste,  Constitutions  Modernes,  1.  135,  136,  158  n. 

2  Headlam,  Bismarck,  300,  301. 

3  Ibid.,  296,  297. 

4  Constitution  of  the  German  Empire,  1871,  art.  6,  printed  in  Dareste, 
Constitutions  Modernes,  1.  137,  138. 


536  THE  GERMAN  [chap.  xxvi. 

parliament,  the  Reichstag,  to  come  third,  and  far  behind  the 
other  two.  The  king  was  to  declare  war  or  make  peace,  to 
command  the  armed  forces,  and  to  be  provided  with  a 
chancellor,  the  sole  minister  of  the  federation.1  The 
Bundesrath  besides  having  an  equal  share  with  the  Reichstag 
in  making  laws  was  to  have  large  executive  powers,  ordering 
how  the  laws  when  passed  should  be  executed,  and  appoint- 
ing committees  of  its  members  to  supervise  departments  of 
administration.2  The  Reichstag  was  to  have  no  powers 
except  those  which  related  to  taxation  and  law  making. 

On  February  12,  1867,  a  parliament  of  the  northern 
Germans,  called  Constituent  Parliament,  was  elected  to 
The  German  consider  Bismarck's  scheme  for  a  compact  or 
Empire,  constitution :   it  met  on  February  24  at  Berlin, 

and  by  April  17  it  had  accepted  the  scheme 
without  any  considerable  alteration  beyond  a  provision  that 
at  elections  of  the  Reichstag  voting  should  be  secret.3  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  either  the  governments  which  in 
the  autumn  of  1866  consented  that  some  federal  compact 
should  be  made,  or  the  parliament  which  in  the  next 
spring  accepted  Bismarck's  form  of  federal  compact  were 
perfectly  free  agents:  they  could  see  near  at  hand  the 
Prussian  army  fresh  from  a  decisive  victory.  But  three 
years  later,  in  1870,  when  the  north  Germans  had  to  fight 
their  unavoidable  war  against  Louis  Napoleon  and  the 
French,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  they  were  sincere 
acceptants  of  the  scheme  of  federation  :  they  ratified  it  with 
their  blood.  While  the  Germans  were  winning  their 
victories  in  France,  the  four  south  German  states,  Hesse 
Darmstadt,  Baden,  Bavaria,  and  Wurtemberg,  between 
November    15    and    November    25,    asked    and    obtained 

1  Constitution  of  the  German  Empire,  1871,  articles  11,  15,  17,  printed  in 
Dareste,  Constitutions  Modernes,  1.  139,  140. 

2  Ibid. ,  articles  7  and  8. 

3  Hahn,  Fiirst  Bismarck,  1.  594-643 ;  Headlam,  Bismarck,  299. 


chap,  xxvi.]  EMPIRE  537 

admission  to  the  federation :  in  December  the  Reichstag 
voted  that  the  king  of  Prussia  should  be  emperor :  and  on 
January  18,  1871,  the  king  by  proclamation  from  Versailles 
accepted  the  new  title.  In  April  1871  the  constitution  was 
revised  by  the  Reichstag.  Most  of  the  changes  made  in  the 
text  were  merely  verbal  emendations,  necessitated  by  the 
admission  of  four  more  states  and  by  the  substitution  of 
emperor  for  king.  One  was  of  more  importance.  In  accord- 
ance with  agreements  made  by  the  Prussian  king  with  the 
four  south  German  new  comers  into  the  federation,  it  was 
enacted  that  henceforth  no  change  in  the  constitution 
should  be  made  unless  it  was  approved  by  a  majority  in  the 
Reichstag  and  by  three  fourths  (instead  of  two  thirds)  of 
the  Bundesrath.1  Under  this  new  provision  any  group  of 
states  with  fifteen  votes  out  of  the  total  of  fifty  eight  in  the 
Bundesrath  could  forbid  a  change  in  the  constitution. 

The  government  of  Germany  has  continued  to  be  what 
Bismarck  intended  it  should  be.  The  Emperor  and  his 
Chancellor  with  the  support  of  the  Bundesrath  Germany 
do  almost  exactly  as  they  think  fit.  The  Reichs-  since  l87I> 
tag  has  under  the  constitution  the  power  to  refuse  new 
taxes :  but,  as  it  is  divided  into  many  parties,  it  has  never 
prevented  the  imposition  of  a  tax,  and  has  never  controlled 
administration.  The  Germans,  however,  are  content  to  be 
governed  by  Emperor,  Chancellor,  and  Bundesrath,  and  no 
body  of  citizens  in  Europe  can  vie  with  them  in  readiness 
to  make  individual  sacrifices  for  their  common  advantage. 

Before  we  leave  those  modern  junctions  of  unequals  which 
are  said  to  be  voluntary,  we  may  observe  that  a  junction 
said  to  be  voluntary  is  sometimes  not  really  voluntary, 
and  then  is  not  a  permanent  junction  at  all:  it  may  be 
repudiated,  but  afterwards  it  may  be  followed  by  a  real 
junction  effected  by  compulsion.    This  was  what  happened 

1  Dareste,  Constitutions  Modernes,  1.  158  n. 


538  GENERAL  [chap.  xxvi. 

in  Scotland,  and  in  a  less  striking  degree  in  Ireland.  The 
Union  of  Scotland  with  England  in  1707  was  not  ratified  by 

any  body  that  could  speak  for  all  the  Scots :  it 
junctions  of  was  repudiated  by  later  Scots,  but  its  repudiation 
Survey  *(xl  Avas  f°ll°wed  by  a  most  effectual  compulsory 
Scotland  and  junction  of  the  Scots  with  the  English,  which  in 

two  or  three  generations  produced  a  single 
community  of  Great  Britain  perfectly  united  in  hearts  and 
aims.  In  Ireland  also  the  Union  of  1801  was  not  ratified 
by  any  body  that  could  express  the  common  wishes  of  the 
Irish :  no  such  body  could  have  existed,  because  the  Irish 
had  no  common  wishes  beyond  a  readiness  for  internal 
strife.  The  so-called  compact  of  1801  was  not  indeed  ever 
repudiated  by  rebellion :  but  Daniel  O'Connell  and  his  later 
disciples  said  and  say  that  the  Irish  with  the  exception  of 
north  eastern  Ulster  wish  to  repudiate  the  compact.  The 
people  of  Great  Britain  were  in  fact  from  the  time  of 
O'Connell  onward  driven  by  an  instinct  of  self  preservation, 
founded  on  a  belief  that  the  Irish  could  not  govern  them- 
selves without  hurting  their  neighbours,  to  maintain  a 
junction  of  Ireland  with  Great  Britain  by  compulsion.  Till 
1906  it  was  thought  by  a  majority  in  Great  Britain  that  the 
junction  of  Ireland  with  Great  Britain,  though  maintained 
by  compulsion,  had  produced  in  the  space  of  two  generations 
since  1850  almost  as  excellent  results  as  the  compulsory 
junction  of  Scotland  with  England  had  produced  in  the 
space  of  two  generations  between  the  battle  of  Culloden  and 
the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  that  the 
junction  ought  to  be  maintained.  As  I  write  on  March  9, 
1914,  it  seems  that  the  general  opinion  of  the  salutary 
effects  of  the  junction  is  unchanged,  but  owing  to  circum- 
stances with  which  every  one  is  acquainted,  it  is  impossible 
to  foresee  what  will  be  decided  in  the  Parliament  at 
Westminster  in  regard  to  the  future  of  the  Irish. 


chap,  xxvi.]  COMMENTS  539 

The  junctions  of  the  Italian  peoples  and  of  the  German 
peoples  remain  as  the  only  examples  of  voluntary  junctions 
of  unequal  bodies  politic.  Of  them  I  have  only  (2)  Italy  and 
to  remark  that  both  in  Italy  and  in  Germany  Germany, 
the  terms  of  the  compacts  of  junction  and  the  form  of  the 
government  after  the  junction  were  settled  according  to 
the  wishes  of  the  strongest  people  that  took  part  in  the 
junction.  In  Italy  the  weaker  peoples  had  in  1859  no 
governments:  the  Piedmontese,  the  strongest  people, 
decided  that  Italy  should  have  only  one  government,  and 
the  Italians  should  as  quickly  as  possible  generate  a  unitary 
nation.  In  Germany  the  lesser  peoples  had  gone  on  without 
much  change  of  their  structure  or  government  for  one  or 
two  centuries  longer  than  the  Prussians,  who  were  the 
strongest  people:  for  the  Prussians  had  been  greatly 
altered  from  the  time  of  the  Great  Elector  onwards  by 
acquisitions  of  new  subjects  and  by  important  legislative 
innovations.  Hence  Bismarck  decided  that  the  governments 
of  the  lesser  peoples  must  be  allowed  to  survive,  that  the 
Germans  should  have  not  one  government  but  many 
governments,  and  that  their  junction  should  have  a  federal 
character :  at  the  same  time,  however,  he  contrived  that  the 
common  government  should  be  far  more  powerful  than  the 
common  government  in  any  other  federation,  and  should 
be  mainly  under  the  control  of  Prussia  the  preponderant 
state  in  the  federation. 

We  have  now  considered  five  ways  in  which  bodies  politic 
have  joined  together  and  formed  new  bodies  politic.  The 
five  ways  are  these:  (1)  Compulsory  junctions  of  unlike 
bodies  politic:  (2)  Compulsory  junctions  of  tribes  effected 
by  one  of  the  tribes:  (3)  Compulsory  junctions  of  fiefs 
effected  by  one  of  the  fiefs :  (4)  Voluntary  junctions  of 
equal  communities :  (5)  Voluntary  junctions  of  unequal 
bodies  politic.      There  is  yet  one   more  way  in  which  a 


540  GENERAL  [chap.  xxvi. 

junction  of  peoples  can  be  at  least  attempted:  for  peoples 
may  be  ordered  to  join  together  by  states  not  themselves 
parties    in   the  junction.     Several  junctions   of 
states  peoples  were  ordaineTl  by  the  Powers  of  Europe 

ordained  by     assembled  at    Utrecht   in    1713,   by    Napoleon 

other  states  . 

rarely  make     Buonaparte  in  1803,  and  in  1814  by  the  Congress 

new  bodies      0f  yienna.    But  junctions  ordained  from  outside 
politic.  J 

rarely  produce  new  bodies  politic:  at  any  rate 

they    rarely    produce    bodies    politic    capable    of   holding 

together  and   of  generating   bodies  politic   that  can   hold 

together.     The  Powers  at  Utrecht  decreed  that  the  southern 

Netherlands  and  the  duchy  of  Milan  should  be  transferred 

from  Spain  to  Austria :   but  both  the  southern  Netherlands 

and  Milan  remained  bodies  politic  just  as  much  separate 

from  Austria  as  they  had  been  from  Spain.     The  Congress 

of  Vienna  tried  to  join  the  southern  Netherlands  to  the 

Dutch    kingdom,    and    Norway    to    Sweden:     but    their 

attempted    junctions    produced    little    permanent    result. 

Napoleon  Buonaparte  in  1803,  and  in  one  isolated  instance 

the   Congress   of  Vienna  were  more  successful:    but   the 

operations    in    Avhich    they    succeeded    were    of    minute 

dimensions.      Buonaparte   by  influencing  the  decisions   of 

the   Committee   of    the   German    Diet    in    1803    effected 

permanent  junctions  of  infinitesimal   groups   of   men    to 

adjoining  peoples  much  like  themselves,  and  the  Congress 

of  Vienna  permanently  annexed  two  fifths  of  Saxony  to 

the  adjoining  kingdom  of  Prussia.      These  are   the  only 

instances   known   to   me   in   which   an  order  given   from 

outside  has  made  a  new  body  politic:  and  thus  the  chief 

origins  of  new  bodies  politic  are  only  junctions  effected 

either  through  compulsion  or  voluntarily  by  bodies  politic 

or    groups    of   men   who   are    themselves    parties    in    the 

junctions. 

I  now  proceed  to  sum  up  the  conclusions  to  which   I 


chap,  xxvi.]  COMMENTS  541 

have  been  led  in  regard  to  voluntary  junctions  of  unequal 
communities.  In  Italy,  where  the  weaker  communities  had 
no    governments   of  native   growth   before  the   _ 

......  Summary. 

junction,  those  communities  after  the  junction 
were  mere  provinces,  and  had  only  such  governments  as  the 
supreme  government  chose  to  allot  to  them :  the  whole  was 
for  one  or  two  generations  a  composite  body  politic  under 
one  government:  now  it  seems  to  be  becoming  a  unitary 
nation.  In  Germany,  where  the  many  weaker  communities 
no  less  than  the  one  stronger  community  had  governments 
of  native  growth,  those  communities  were  able  at  the 
junction  to  stipulate  that  after  the  junction  their  native 
governments  should  be  assured  to  them  by  the  compact 
of  junction,  and  should  not  be  entirely  dependent  on  the 
will  of  the  common  government  of  the  conjoined  com- 
munities. Thus  after  the  junction  the  body  politic  was 
composite  with  some  federal  characteristics :  the  whole 
had  many  governments,  in  some  degree  co-ordinate:  each 
component  community  had  its  own  native  government,  and 
there  was  also  a  common  government  to  attend  to  the 
common  interests  of  all.  These  facts  are  here  set  down  in 
a  table. 


542  TABULAR  VIEW  [chap.  Xxvi. 


BODIES  POLITIC  DERIVED  FROM  VOLUNTARY 
JUNCTIONS  OF  UNEQUAL  COMMUNITIES 

Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

(1)  In  Italy,  where  the  weaker 
communities  had  no  govern- 
ments of  native  growth. 

(a)  For  two  generations. 

Composite  bodies  politic  under   King,  Cabinet,  Parliament, 
one  government. 


(b)  Since  about  1910. 

Unitary  nation.  King,  Cabinet,  Parliament. 

(2)  In  Germany,  where  all  the 
communities  had  governments 
of  native  growth. 
A  federation.  Many  governments. 

One  government  for  each  com- 
ponent community. 
One  central  government,  far 
stronger  than  any  of  the 
governments  in  the  component 
communities,  for  conducting 
the  common  policy  of  all. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

PEDIGREES  OF   BODIES  POLITIC 

My  gallery  of  sketches  now  includes  representations  of  all 
those  bodies  politic  that  the  range  of  my  knowledge  permits 
me  to  depict.  Many  subjects  have  been  omitted  :  among 
them  the  most  important  are  perhaps  those  that  occur  in 
the  histories  of  Russia,  of  India  under  British  rule,  of  Austria- 
Hungary,  of  colonies  founded  by  Europeans,  and  in  the 
recent  history  of  Japan.  From  a  superficial  acquaintance 
with  the  histories  of  Russia,  of  India,  and  of  Japan,  I  am  led 
to  think  that  it  would  be  my  wish  to  depict  some  subjects 
that  occur  in  them,  if  my  knowledge  sufficed.  With  the 
colonies  and  with  Austria-Hungary  the  case  is  different: 
they  might  reasonably  be  passed  over  even  by  a  delineator 
who  knew  them  thoroughly.  Colonial  communities  with 
few  exceptions  are  unlike  perfectly  independent  bodies 
politic  because  they  do  not  conduct  their  own  relations 
with  foreign  powers,  and  bodies  politic  in  Austria- Hungary 
ever  since  1527  have  had  so  complicated  a  structure  that 
they  are  not  comparable  with  those  of  other  lands.  If 
Austro- Hungarian  bodies  politic  were  to  be  depicted  at  all, 
it  should  not  be  done  till  the  bodies  politic  of  other  countries 
had  been  viewed  as  a  whole,  and  well  comprehended,  and 
were  well  remembered. 

Now  that  the  work  of  description  is  done  it  will  be  advan- 
tageous to  get  a  bird's  eye  viewof  the  objects  described.  Bodies 
politic  have  already  been  arranged  in  their  pedigrees,  and  the 


544  GENERAL  VIEW  [chap,  xxvii. 

pedigrees  have  fallen  into  groups,  such  that  all  the  pedigrees 

that  occur  in  a  group  are  in  some   measure  akin  to  one 

another.     In   order   to   get   a   general  view  of 

Plan  of  a  ... .  , .  .  ,  .  . 

general  view  bodies  politic  we  only  need  to  arrange  the 
of  bodies  groups  of  pedigrees  in  larger  groups.  Two  of 
the  groups  already  recognised  are  those  that 
occur  in  ancient  cities  and  in  mediaeval  cities.  These  two 
can  be  put  together  as  bodies  politic  in  cities.  All  the  rest 
belong  to  countries.  Thus  our  two  largest  divisions  of  bodies 
politic  are  those  of  I.  Cities,  and  II.  Countries.  In  the 
first  division,  which  contains  the  urban  communities,  the 
subdivisions  are  (1)  ancient,  (2)  mediaeval.  In  the  second 
division,  which  belongs  to  countries,  bodies  politic  are  sub- 
divided according  as  they  are  descended  (1)  from  com- 
pulsory junctions  of  like  communities,  (2)  from  compulsory 
junctions  of  unlike  bodies  politic,  (3)  from  voluntary 
junctions  of  equals,  and  (4)  from  voluntary  junctions  of 
unequals. 

The  statements  just  made  afford  a  plan  of  a  bird's  eye 
view :  it  yet  remains  for  me  to  remind  myself  and  my 
Character  of  readers  what  bodies  politic  and  what  govern- 
the  view.  ments  occur  in  each  part  of  the  plan.  In  order 
to  save  the  view  from  being  confused  with  details,  no  more 
must  be  put  in  than  just  enough  to  help  the  memory. 
Where  pedigrees  run  parallel  some  reminder  of  the  bodies 
politic  and  the  governments  that  occur  in  one  or  two  stages 
of  the  pedigrees  will  be  inserted.  Where  a  pedigree  is 
isolated,  as  occurs  in  the  histories  of  Sparta,  Rome,  Venice, 
Genoa  and  France,  it  will  be  indicated  only  by  the  name  of 
the  place  to  which  it  belongs :  but  everywhere  references 
will  be  given  to  passages  in  earlier  chapters  in  which  the 
characters  of  the  pedigrees  are  specified. 

The  general  view  of  the  pedigrees  of  bodies  politic  will 
be  given,  as  sectional  views  have  been  given  already,  in  a 


chap,  xxvil]  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  545 

tabular  form.  The  table  here  inserted  is  a  memoria  technica 
and  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  classification  of  the  scientific 
kind.     A  scientific  classification  is  a  form  for  the 

.  The  view 

compendious   expression   of  general  laws.      In   iSOniya 
the  region  of  political  phenomena  it   may  be  mem°na 
doubted  whether    any  general  laws  have    yet 
been  discovered,   and   therefore    genuine    classification    of 
things  political  is  for  the  present  impossible. 


546 


TABULAR 


[chap.   XXVI I. 


A    TABLE    OF    BODIES    POLITIC    ARRANGED    IN 
PEDIGREES,  AND  OF  THEIR  GOVERNMENTS 


Bodies  Politic. 

Division  I. —In  Cities. 
Subdivision  (1).  In  ancient  cities. 

Group  1. — In  cities  with  infinit- 
esimal territory  (Corinth 
and  about  sixty  others). 
See  p.  157. 

Purely  urban  communities. 


Group  2. — In  cities  with  some 
territory,  which  was  at  first 
important,  but  afterwards  be- 
came insignificant  (Argos  and 
Athens).     See  pp.  157-159. 

(a)  Till  468  B.C.  (Argos),  and 
431  B.C.  (Athens). 

Communities  partly  urban, 
partly  rural. 


Governments. 


Class  governments : 

(1)  Rule  of  the  rich,  or 

(2)  Rule  of  a  usurper,  or 

(3)  Rule  of  the  poor. 


Mixed  governments. 


(b)  Purely  urban  communities.         Rule  of  the  poor. 

Group  3. — Isolated  pedigrees  : 
In  Sparta.     See  p.  159. 
In  Rome.     See  pp.  280,  281. 


CHAP.    XXVII.] 


VIEW 


54V 


A   TABLE   OF   BODIES   POLITIC   ARRANGED    IN    PEDIGREES 

AND  OF  THEIR  governments. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

Subdivision   (2). — In    mediaeval 
cities. 


Governments. 


Group  1. — In  terrestrial  cities, 
having  rural  territory,  at 
first  important,  afterwards 
insignificant  (the  Lombard 
cities,  Florence,  Bologna). 
See  pp.  384,  385. 

(a)  Till  the  thirteenth  century, 
communities  partly  urban, 
partly  rural. 


(b)  From  the  thirteenth  century, 
purely  urban  communities. 


Mixed  governments. 


Class  governments  of 

(1)  Trade  guilds,  or 

(2)  Usurpers. 


Group  2. — Isolated  pedigrees  in 
maritime  cities : 
In  Genoa.     See  p.  408. 
In  Venice.     See  pp.  408-9. 


548 


TABULAE 


[chap.  XXVII. 


A  TABLE  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  ARRANGED   IN   PEDIGREES, 
AND  OF  their  governments. — Continued. 


Bodies  Politic. 

Division  II.— In  Countries. 
Subdivision  (1). — Bodies  politic 
descended   from    compulsory 
junctions  of  like  communities. 

Group  1. — From  junctions  of 
tribes.     See  pp.  341,  440-1. 

Subgroup  (a). — From  junctions 
of  many  tribes  in  England, 
Castile,  Scandinavia. 

(a)  Till  about  1450  a.d. 
Composite  bodies  politic. 

(b)  From  about  1500  a.d. 
Almost  united  communities. 

(c)  From  various  dates. 
Unitary  nations. 

Subgroup  (b). — Descended  from 
junctions  of  few  tribes,  in 
German  principalities. 

(a)  Till  1500  A.D. 

Simple  communities. 


Governments. 


King  and  a  rudely  made  Parlia- 
ment :  sometimes  civil  war. 

Strong  king :   Parliament  very 
weak. 

Cabinet,   Parliament,   dignified 
Sovereign. 


Prince  and  Landtag. 


(b)  Simple    communities    often 
engaged  in  dangerous  wars. 

Group    2. — From    junctions    of 

fiefs :  an  isolated  pedigree. 
In  France.     Sec  pp.  351,  440-1. 


Prince  as  sole  ruler. 


CHAP.    XXVII.] 


VIEW 


549 


A   TABLE  OF  BODIES   POLITIC  ARRANGED   IN   PEDIGREES, 

and  of  their  governments. — Continued. 

f 

Bodies  Politic.  Governments. 

Subdivision  (2).  —  Descended 
from  compulsory  junctions  of 
unlike  bodies  politic  :  Hetero- 
geneous Empires.     Seep.  329. 

Group  1. — Of  the  Koman  type. 
Empire  of  the  Caesars,  Russia, 
India  under  British  rule. 

Group    2.  —  Of    the    mediaeval 

German  type. 
Austrasian       Empire,       Saxon 

Empire. 
Subdivision      (3).  —  Descended 

from  voluntary   junctions   of 

equals.     See  p.  516. 

Group  1. — From  junctions  made     Many  governments. 

by  governments.  Common  government  weak. 


A     single    man,     bureaucratic 
civil  service,  standing  army. 


A  single  man,  and  assembly  of 
local  chieftains. 


Group  2. — From  junctions  made 

by  communities. 
Subdivision      (4).  —  Descended 

from   voluntary   junctions  of 

unequals.     See  p.  542. 
Isolated  instances  : 

In  Italy.     See  pp.  522-527. 

In     modern   Germany.      See 
pp.  527-537. 


Many  governments. 
Common  government  strong. 


550  PEDIGEEES  [chap,  xxvii. 

Now  that  my  view  of  bodies  politic  has  been  exhibited,  it 

may  be  well  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  method  by  which 

it  was  obtained.     That  method  differs  from  the 

Merits  and 

demerits  of     one  ordinarily  employed  in  taking  bodies  politic 

menTof118^  anc*  not  states  as  tne  un^s  °f  political  organisa- 
bodies  politic  tion.  It  is  cumbrous,  no  doubt :  but  so  are  most 
mpe  lgrees.  j^^j^g  whicn  require  us  to  look  at  things  as 
they  really  are,  at  least  till  they  have  been  used  by  many 
successive  investigators.  The  method  which  takes  states  as 
units  feels  handy  when  it  is  first  tried,  but  the  views  to 
which  it  leads  are  apt  to  be  hazy,  and  the  habit  of  using  it 
has  probably  led  men  into  erroneous  opinions.  From  re- 
garding a  state  as  a  single  political  organisation  there  is  but 
a  short  step  to  regarding  it  as  one  for  all  purposes:  and 
from  regarding  a  state  as  one  for  all  purposes  come  many 
of  the  worst  fallacies  put  forward  by  those  who  speak  or 
write  about  political  phenomena.  There  are,  for  example, 
persons  who  assert  and  perhaps  believe  that  states  wear  out 
from  old  age  as  men  do.  From  any  such  absurd  error  we 
are  protected,  if  we  regard  bodies  politic  as  our  units :  for 
we  are  compelled  to  see  that  a  state  is  not  an  individual 
but  a  family:  and  the  family  may  go  on  indefinitely, 
if  it  breeds  progeny  fitted  to  survive  in  the  struggle  for 
existence. 

But  the  assumption  that  a  body  politic  is  the  unit  of 
political  organisation  has  compelled  me  to  use  the  word 
.,  r   pedigree,  and  under  that  word  some  delusions 

Meanings  of    *        a       ' 

the  word  may  lurk.  The  word,  I  believe,  meant  originally 
pe  gree.  &  crane's  foot,  a  combination  of  lines  used  in 
the  Middle  Ages  by  men  who  wrote  out  genealogies : 1  by  an 
easy  metaphor  its  meaning  has  been  changed,  so  that  it 
now  denotes  any  table  of  descent.  It  is  often  used  as  a 
name  for  a  succession   of  men   of  one  family:  it  might 

1  Skeat,  Etymological  Dictionary,  article  'Pedigree.' 


chap,  xxvii.]  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  551 

denote  the  succession  of  forms  through  which  a  species  of 
plants  or  animals  has  attained  its  present  character.  As 
1  have  used  it  to  denote  a  succession  of  bodies  politic,  I 
wish  to  point  out  that  a  pedigree  of  bodies  politic  differs 
from  a  pedigree  of  human  beings,  that  a  body  politic  differs 
from  a  human  being,  and  that  a  pedigree  of  bodies  politic 
differs  from  a  pedigree  of  a  kind  of  plants  or  animals. 

Firstly,  then,  bodies  politic  in  a  pedigree  do  not  vary  so 
suddenly  and  incomprehensibly  as  men  in  a  family.     In  a 
family  of  human  beings  a  son  may  lose  his  father   petjigrees 
before  he  is  born  and  his  mother  immediately  political  con- 
after  :  he  may  never  know  the  care  of  kinsfolk,  pedigrees 
may  go  away  into  a  foreign  land,  and  may  grow   of  men- 
up  entirely  unlike  either  of  his  parents.    Among   bodies 
politic  this  cannot  happen.     Each  generation  must  in  its 
youth  live  with  an  older  generation,  and  learn  its  thoughts, 
habits,  and  traditions:   thus  in  a  family  of  bodies  politic 
changes   of   character    do  not    occur    spasmodically,    but 
gradually,  and  to  those  who  look  on  from  a  distance  almost 
imperceptibly. 

Secondly,  a  body  politic  differs  from  a  single  human  being 
because  it  never  has  only  one  mind  and  one  will.     There 
may  be  rare  occasions  when  the  desires  of  a  body   Bodies 
politic  jump  together  towards  one  main  purpose,   politic  con- 

-  .  trasted  with 

but  even  then  each  person  has  his  own  separate  individual 
desires.  In  a  single  human  being  there  may  be  men- 
conflicting  desires,  but  at  any  given  moment  those  desires 
which  are  not  preponderant  are  suppressed  and  incapable 
of  leading  to  action.  In  a  body  politic  it  is  not  so:  on 
ordinary  occasions  certain  wishes  of  certain  parts  of  the 
population  have  a  preponderance,  but  in  other  parts  conflict- 
ing wishes  are  present,  and  are  not  suppressed  but  produce 
action  which  may  thwart  the  fulfilment  of  those  wishes 
which  have  the  preponderance.     What   is   called   the   will 


552  PEDIGREES  [chap,  xxvii. 

of  a  people  does  not  exist:  what  does  exist  is  merely 
the  resultant  of  many  divergent  and  some  directly  opposite 
wishes. 

Thirdly,  a  pedigree  of  bodies  politic  is  unlike  a  pedigree 
of  filiated  species  in  at  least  two  respects.  For,  in  the  first 
Pedigrees  place,  in  a  pedigree  of  species  each  generation 
political  con-    usually   comprises   myriads    of   myriads   of  in- 

trasted  with       -i .    •  -■      -i        i  1  i  •     •  •  i     t_  i 

pedigrees  of  dividual  plants  or  animals  undistinguisnable 
species.  from  one  another :  in  a  pedigree  of  bodies  politic 

each  generation  is  only  one  body  politic,  and  it  is  likely 
that  in  the  whole  world  there  has  never  existed  another  just 
like  it.  In  the  second  place,  plants  and  animals  in  a  wild 
state  breed  progeny  from  generation  to  generation  so  like 
themselves  that  from  shortly  after  the  death  of  Linnaeus 
in  1778  almost  till  the  appearance  in  1859  of  Darwin's 
Origin  of  Species  many  masters  in  the  sciences  of  botany 
and  zoology  believed  that  species  were  for  ever  immutable.1 
With  bodies  politic  variation  is  not  exceptional,  but  appears 
to  occur  always  in  the  passage  from  one  generation  to 
another  in  all  peoples  that  have  attained  to  a  civilised 
condition.  At  the  present  time  we  see  clearly  that  no 
civilised  body  politic  breeds  in  the  next  generation  a  body 
exactly  like  itself:  and  the  evidence  of  history  indicates 
that  in  past  times  also  no  body  politic  sufficiently  civilised 
to  be  carefully  described  by  eye-witnesses  ever  had  issue 
exactly  in  its  own  likeness.  The  differences  between 
pedigrees  of  species  and  pedigrees  of  bodies  politic  may  be 
summed  up  by  saying  that,  whereas  among  plants  and 
animals  every  generation  contains  innumerable  specimens 
exactly  alike,  and  for  periods  extending  through  centuries 
wild  plants  and  wild  animals  breed  progeny  undistinguisn- 
able   from    themselves,  among    bodies   politic   no    species 

1  Julius  von  Sachs,  History  of  Botany,  translated  by  H.  E.  F.  Garnsey, 
Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  1890,  pp.  8-10. 


chap,  xxvii.]  OF  BODIES  POLITIC  553 

contains  more  than  one  specimen,  and  no  civilised  body 
politic  has  issue  exactly  in  its  own  image. 

To  my  readers,  whether  they  are  students  of  History  or  of 
Politics,  a  few  words  may  be  addressed  at  parting.  It  must 
be  confessed  that  what  has  been  laid  before  them  contains 
only  a  minute  department  of  History  and  nothing  that  is 
ordinarily  called  Politics.  History  investigates  all  that  men 
have  felt,  and  thought,  and  done :  Politics,  as  the  word  is 
commonly  understood,  has  for  its  substance  a  few  pro- 
positions deduced  from  definitions  and  axioms,  deemed  to 
be  so  obvious  that  they  need  no  proof,  but  it  also  usually 
admits  some  illustrations  from  history.  In  my  work  all 
feelings  and  thoughts  and  actions  of  men  are  neglected 
except  those  that  help  to  make  communities  and  bodies 
politic :  to  depict  individual  bodies  politic  has  been  my  aim. 
No  reference  has  been  made  to  any  axiom :  and  definitions 
have  never  been  used  as  premises  for  conclusions,  but  only 
as  short  formula?  designating  things  already  described.  But 
there  is  no  reason  why  what  has  been  said  need  be  useless 
to  students  of  either  History  or  Politics.  A  knowledge  of 
individual  bodies  politic  is  a  sound  foundation  on  which 
a  superstructure  of  history  can  be  erected  i  and  it  may  also 
serve  as  a  corrective  for  some  of  the  false  notions  often 
entertained  by  those  who  deduce  political  propositions  from 
axioms  and  definitions.  At  the  end  of  my  work  I  am  even 
more  convinced  than  before  beginning  it  that  in  the  region 
of  political  phenomena  no  axiom  is  universally  true,  that 
no  definition  can  be  trusted  if  it  is  made  before  all  the 
objects  which  it  is  intended  to  cover  have  been  described, 
and  that  if  there  is  ever  to  be  a  science  of  politics  the 
materials  for  making  it  must  be  collected  by  observation 
and  description  of  recorded  phenomena. 


INDEX 


AcHiEAN  League,  148,  469-73. 

Antalkidas,  peace  of,  127. 

Areopagus,  56,  75,  91. 

Aristotle,  his  axioms,  definitions,  and 
classification  of  governments,  148-8. 

Argolis,  early  history  of,  48-9. 

Argos,  126,  137. 

Asia  Minor,  Greek  cities  in,  18. 

Athens  before  490  B.C.     See  Attica. 

Athens  and  the  Athenians  after  490 B.C. : 
Archons  taken  by  lot,  487  B.C.,  74; 
consequent  decay  of  the  Areopagus, 
75 ;  one  strategus  set  above  the  other 
nine,  76 ;  Athenian  navy,  76 ;  battle 
of  Salamis,  78 ;  Athenian  maritime 
hegemony,  477  B.C.,  86-9;  its  op- 
pressive character,  92 ;  Athenians  in 
receipt  of  tribute,  95-118;  their  tribu- 
tary cities,  96-8;  Athens  (431  B.c- 
413  B.C.),  its  population,  condition, 
and  government,  101-9 ;  working  of  its 
government,  429  B.C.-413  B.C.,  110-13  ; 
Peisander  and  the  Four  Hundred,  119- 
21;  battle  of  JSgospotami,  123;  Athens 
after  404  B.C.,  136-7. 

Athens  and  Rome  compared,  281-2. 

Attica,  early  history  of,  49-53 ;  Solon's 
constitution,  53-8  ;  Peisistratus,  58-9  ; 
Hippias,  60;  invaded  by  Kleomenes, 
63  ;  constitution  of  Kleisthenes,  65-71 ; 
battle  of  Marathon,  74 ;  population  of, 
in  431  B.c,  101. 

Augustus,  his  regulation  of  the  army, 
288-9  ;  his  conquests  of  territory,  290  ; 
his  desire  that  no  more  territory  should 
be  conquered,  290.    See  also  Octavius. 

Austrasian  Empire,  322-4. 


Balance  of  Power,  422. 
Bodies  politic,  pedigrees  of,  543-53. 
also  Tabular  views. 


See 


Body  Politic,  sense  in  which  the  term  is 

used,  1,  4. 
Bologna,  less  unwarlike  than  Florence 

and  usually  better  governed,  876-7. 
Bureaucracy,  306. 

Cesar,  269-71. 

Charlemagne,  322-3. 

Cities.  See  Greek  cities,  Italian  peoples, 
Rome,  Cities  (mediaeval). 

Cities  (mediaeval).  See  Bologna,  Florence, 
Genoa,  Milan,  Venice.  Cities  in  medi- 
aeval Germany,  382-3 ;  tabular  view  of 
communities  in  the  inland  towns  of 
mediaeval  Italy,  384-5;  tabular  view 
of  mediaeval  maritime  cities  with  de- 
pendencies, 408-9. 

Class  governments,  46. 

Community,  meaning  of  the  word,  1. 

Composite  bodies  politic,  351-3. 

Constitution,  early  instances  of  the  use  of 
the  word  in  England,  446-7. 

Constitutions  (modern)  in  Continental 
Europe,  454-6. 

Demokratia,  46;  Aristotelian  Demokratia, 
143;  Demokratia  at  Athens,  109-13, 
118,  121. 

Denmark,  strong  kingly  government 
established  in,  436. 

Dikasteria,  97,  108. 

Dorians,  their  great  migration,  17 ;  their 
early  political  condition,  19. 

Dutch  Netherlands,  their  weak  federa- 
tion, 476-9. 

EKKLftsiA  at  Athens,  105-6. 
Empire,  history  of  the  word,  309. 
Empireof  the  Caesars:  its  initial  character, 
285  ;  its  provinces,  some  imperial,  some 
i      senatorial,  288  ;  its  army  under  Augus- 
665 


556 


INDEX 


tus,  288-9;  Tiberius,  291-3;  wars  to 
settle  the  succession,  294,296-7 ;  change 
in  the  composition  of  the  legions,  294-7 ; 
tranquillity  and  stagnation,  70  A.D.- 
180  A.D.,  297-8;  Praetorian  Prefects, 
299 ;  decay  of  imperial  authority,  235 
A.D.-283  a.d.,  300  ;  Diocletian  and  Con- 
stantine,  their  changes  in  administra- 
tion, 300-6 ;  Constantino's  alliance  with 
Christian  bishops,  307 ;  after  Constan- 
tino, decay  of  armies,  and  great  influence 
of  bishops,  308-9  ;  end  of  the  western 
empire  of  the  Caesars,  315. 

Empires :  three  empires  compared,  310- 
13;  typesof  empires,  327-9.  See  Empire 
of  the  Caesars,  Austrasian  Empire,  Saxon 
Empire,  Russian  Empire,  India  under 
British  rule. 

England ,  the  Normans  in,  335-6 ;  increased 
coherence  of  the  English  in  the  thir- 
teenth century, 336 ;  Parliament,  326-7; 
after  Edward  the  First,  decline  of  kingly 
authority,  ,337-8  ;  Tudor  sovereigns, 
strong  kingly  power  of,  413,  417-19 ; 
England,  unification  of,  418 ;  govern- 
ments of,  1660  a.d.-1835a.d.,  444-50; 
government  of  after  1835  a.d.,  456-64. 

Etruscans,  170-2. 

Eupatridae,  49-52. 

Fikfs,  their  origin,  325,  329-30;  fiefs 
in  France,  337-50 ;  in  the  southern 
Netherlands,  350-1 ;  tabular  views  of 
bodies  politic  descended  from  junctions 
of  fiefs,  351,  467. 

Florence,  early  governments  of,  363-4 ; 
Guelfs  and  Ghibelines  in,  364-5  ;  classes 
in,  365-6 ;  feeblygoverned  by  successful 
tradesmen,  366-71 ;  decay  of  citizen 
armies  in,  370 ;  condottieri  and  mer- 
cenary armies,  370-1 ;  comparatively 
vigorous  government  of  the  captains 
of  the  Parte  Guelfa,  372-4 ;  the  Eight 
Holy  Men,  374;  the  ciompi,  874; 
Michel  di  Lando,  375-6 ;  Tyrannis  in, 
376. 

France,  when  it  got  a  right  to  its  name, 
324 ;  early  kings  in,  see  Paris,  counts 
of,  343 ;  first  extensions  of  the  king's 
demesne  outside  the  county  of  Paris, 
343-5 ;  government  in  the  demesne, 
344-6 ;  le  Parlement  de  Paris,  346-7 ; 
relations  between  the  demesne  and  the 


fiefs,  346-7 ;  quarrel  of  Philip  the  Fourth 
with  Pope  Boniface  the  Eighth,  347-8  ; 
states  general,  348-9 ;  conquest  of  the 
fiefs  by  the  demesne,  411-12;  kingly 
government  in,  413 ;  wars  of  religion 
in,  421-2  ;  privileged  orders  in,  424-5  ; 
Richelieu  and  Louis  xiv. ,  425-7  ;  misery 
in,  428;  French  Revolution,  428-32; 
unification  of  France,  432 ;  tabular 
view  of  French  bodies  politic,  467. 

Genoa,  its  prosperity  till  1256  a.d.,  and 
subsequent  decline,  386-91. 

Germans,  their  settlements  in  conquered 
Roman  provinces,  316-22 ;  their  in- 
clusion in  the  Austrasian  Empire,  322  ; 
their  condition,  843  a.  d.  -936  a.  d.  ,  324-5 ; 
their  inclusion  in  the  Saxon  Empire, 
325-7;  their  principalities  and  Land- 
tage,  338 ;  their  princes  uncontrolled 
by  Landtage  after  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, 416,  436  ;  compulsory  junctions 
of  their  small  principalities,  437-8. 

Germany  (Modern),  527-37. 

Great  Britain,  by  1830  A.D.  a  united 
nation,  450. 

Greece,  physical  geography  of,  26-9. 

Greek  cities,  general  view  of,  to  480  B.C., 
80-5 ;  their  political  isolation,  61,  80, 
141,  149,  150,  154;  their  first  contact 
with  the  Persians,  72 ;  their  treatment 
of  dependencies,  150-2;  history  of,  after 
412  B.c,  114-38  ;  general  view  of  com- 
munities in,  157-9.  See  also  Greek  in- 
tellect, Greek  peoples,  Athens,  Sparta, 
Greek  cities  (maritime). 

Greek  cities  (maritime),  40-2  ;  their 
governments,  42-7. 

Greek  intellect,  138-40. 

Greek  peoples,  the  earliest  known  govern- 
ments in,  18-25 ;  their  characters  about 
650  B.C.,  29-32 ;  their  first  contact  with 
the  Persians,  72.  See  also  Greek  cities, 
Greek  cities  (maritime),  Athens,  Sparta. 

Greek  settlements  in  Italy  and  Sicily, 
141-2. 

Homeric  poems,  character  of  their  testi- 
mony about  political  institutions,  20-5. 

India  under  British  rule,  312. 
Irish,  their  junction  with   the  English 
451,  521. 


INDEX 


557 


lUliau  cities,  mediaeval.  See  Bologna, 
Florence,  Genoa,  Milan,  Venice. 

Italian  towns,  ancient :  their  general 
character,  273  ;  made  alliances,  but  did 
not  coalesce,  274-5 ;  never  were  under 
a  single  government  before  Caesar's 
time,  275-7 ;  compared  with  Greek 
towns,  277-8 ;  tabular  view  of,  279-81. 

Italy,  physical  geography  of,  160-2 ;  its 
early  inhabitants,  162-5 ;  wars  among 
them,  192-3  ;  Gallic  invasions  of,  193-5. 

Italy  in  the  Middle  Ages,  governors  of, 
before  1075  a.d.,  356;  early  indepen- 
dence of  its  towns,  356-7 ;  wars  of 
the  Hohenstaufen  Kaisers  in,  357-61 ; 
general  unwarlike  character  of  Italian 
townsmen  after  1268  a.d.,  361-2; 
Bologna  and  Florence  exceptional  in 
having  a  civic  militia,  362-3  ;  subjuga- 
tion of  the  inland  towns,  379-80.  See 
also  Bologna,  Florence,  Genoa,  Milan, 
Venice. 

Italy  (Modern),  522-7. 

Kleisthenes,  63-9. 
Kleruchiae,  66,  92. 

Kolophon,  an  early  Ionian  settlement  in 
Asia,  18. 

Latin  colonies,  213-14. 

Latin  towns,  166.    See  also  Italian  towns. 

Latins,  their  early  settlements,  164-7. 

Milan  and  other  cities  in  Northern  Italy, 

362,  378. 
MykGnsean  civilisation,  13-17. 

Netherlands,  history  of  the,  1530  a.d.- 
1577  a.d.,  420  ;  division  of  the,  420-1. 

Netherlands,  Dutch.  See  Dutch  Nether- 
lands. 

North  America,  English  colonies  in,  480  ; 
independent  states  in,  481 ;  their 
Articles  of  Confederation,  481-3 ;  their 
closer  union,  488-90;  the  working  of 
their  constitution,  490-4 ;  parties  in 
the  United  States,  494-7 ;  American 
cities,  497  ;  Tammany,  498-500. 

OcTAVius(Octavianus),  his  compact  with 
Antonius  and  Lepidus,  284 ;  his  vic- 
tories over  his  rivals,  285 ;  his  behaviour 
towards  the  provincials,  286 ;  and  to- 


wards   the    Roman    citizens   and   the 

senate,  286-7 ;  his  title  Augustus,  287. 

For    events    in    his    later    life,    see 

Augustus. 
Oligarchia,  45,  120-1. 
Ostracism,  69. 

Papacy.    See  Popes. 

Paris,  counts  of,  343. 

Parlement  de  Paris,  346-7. 

Peloponnesian  War,  101. 

Perikles,  93,  98-101. 

Popes,   beginning  of  their  power,   321  ; 

improved  method  of  electing,  326 ;  their 

wars  against  Kaisers,  357-9  ;  claims  of 

Pope  Boniface  vm. ,  347. 
Prussia,  growth  of,  433-5;  making  of  a 

Prussian  people,  435. 

Renaissance  and  religious  discords,  415. 

Rome,  its  beginnings,  167-70;  Patres 
and  Plebs  in,  169  ;  under  kings,  172-4 ; 
Servian  reform  of  its  army,  174-6 ;  cen- 
sus in,  176  ;  territory  of,  under  Tarquin 
the  Proud,  176-7 ;  its  earliest  magis- 
trates, 177-8  ;  secession  of  the  Plebs, 
179 ;  jreturn  of  the  Plebs,  180 ;  al- 
liance of  Rome  with  the  Latins,  182; 
contests  between  Patres  and  Plebs, 
182,  192  ;  Decemviri,  183  ;  periods  of 
Roman  history,  184 ;  consuls,  senate, 
centuries,  tribuni,  concilium  plebis, 
185-92;  wars  of  the  Romans  to  388 
B.C.,  193-5  ;  conquest  of  the  Latins  by 
the  Romans,  195 ;  concessions  made  by 
the  Patres  to  the  Plebeians,  196-7,  211 ; 
the  Roman  Senate,  197-9 ;  treatment  of 
the  conquered  Latins  by  the  Romans, 
199-203 ;  territory  of  the  Romans,  326 
B.C.,  205-6;  conquest  of  Italy  by  the 
Romans,  211 ;  provisions  of  the  Romans 
for  controlling  Italy,  212-17 ;  Latin 
Colonies,  213-14;  Maritime  Colonies, 
215 ;  supremacy  of  the  Romans  in  Italy, 
218-37;  First  Punic  War,  219-22; 
war  against  Hannibal,  223-37  ;  Roman 
constitution,  264  B.C. -201  B.C.,  225-30 ; 
social  classes  of  Romans,  264  B.C. -201 
B.C.,  231-4 ;  Roman  juridical  system, 
234-5,  265-6  ;  political  organisation  of 
Italy,  236-7 ;  dependencies  of  the 
Romans,  201  B.C. -46  B.C.,  238-72; 
new  conditions  in  Rome,  200  B.C. -146 


558 


INDEX 


B.C.,  241 ;  social  classes  of  Romans, 
200  B.C-146  B.C.,  243-5;  Latin  and 
Italian  dependents  of  the  Romans, 
245-6;  dissensions  among  classes  of 
Romans  about  the  spoil  of  the  depen- 
dencies, 133  B.C.  -  106  B.C.,  247-54  ; 
curule  families,  231-2, 254-7  ;  defensive 
war  of  the  Romans  against  the  Cimbri 
and  the  Teutones,  258 ;  great  mercenary 
army  made  by  Marius,  258 ;  revolt  of 
the  Italian  allies,  259 ;  predominance 
of  armies  in  Italy,  260-7  ;  Sullan  con- 
stitution, 262-5;  subjugation  of  the 
Roman  commonwealth  by  Cassar  and 
his  army,  271.  For  the  history  of 
Rome  after  46  B.  c. ,  see  Empire  of  the 
Caesars. 

Rome  and  Athens  compared,  281-2. 

Russian  Empire,  311-12. 

Samnites,  their  origin,  conquests,  and 
subjugation  under  the  Romans,  207- 
210. 

Savoy-Piemont,  436-7,  522-7. 

Saxon  Empire,  326-7. 

Scots,  their  junction  with  the  English, 
450,  520. 

Solon,  53-8. 

Spain,  despotic  kingship  in,  413-14;  never 
perfectly  united,  432-3. 

Spartans,  their  earliest  institutions,  33-5  ; 
their  conquest  of  Messenia,  35 ;  their 
discipline,  36 ;  their  early  wars,  37 ; 
their  carelessness  about  the  form  of 
their  government,  38 ;  their  King 
Kleomenes  the  First,  62-4 ;  their 
hegemony  in  the  Peloponnesus,  64, 
89-91 ;  their  temporary  ascendency 
over  the  Greek  peoples,  123  ;  end  of 
their  maritime  ascendency,  125 ;  their 
terrestrial  ascendency,  128-9 ;  their 
internal  condition,  479  b.c-338  B.C., 
181-5. 

State,  early  examples  of  the  use  of  the 
word,  2,  3,  382 ;  is  a  legal  conception, 
4 ;  early  history  of  the  word,  380-2. 

Strategi  at  Athens,  69,  108. 

Sweden,  strong  rule  of  Gustavus  Vasa 
in,  414  ;  unification  of,  416. 

Swiss  Cantons,  their  permanent  alliance, 
473-4  ;  their  imperfect  common  govern- 
ment, 1481  a.d.1512 a.d., 475-6 ;  their 
disruption,  476 ;  their  disorders,  501 ; 


intervention  of  Buonaparte  in,  502 ; 
their  compact  of  1814,  502 ;  their  new 
compacts  in  1848  and  1874,  503-9; 
Swiss  Federation,  509;  Referendum 
and  Popular  Initiative  in,  509-12  ; 
absence  of  clearly  marked  parties  in 
Switzerland,  512. 
Switzerland.    See  Swiss  Cantons. 

Tabular  views  :  of  communities  in  Greek 
cities,  83-4,  157-9 ;  of  ancient  Greek 
and  Italian  bodies  politic,  279-81 ;  of 
empires,  329;  of  bodiespoliticdescended 
from  compulsoryjunctions  of  like  tribes, 
341,  440-1,  466 ;  of  bodies  politic  in 
mediaeval  city  states,  384-5,  408-9 ;  of 
bodies  politic  in  France,  467  ;  of  federal 
bodies  politic,  516 ;  of  bodies  politic 
derived  from  voluntary  junctions  of 
unequal  bodies  politic,  542 ;  of  bodies 
politic  in  general,  546-9. 

Thebes,  129-30. 

Tribe,  usage  of  the  word,  11. 

Tribes,  pastoral  and  agricultural,  6 ; 
pastoral,  in  Germany,  7-8 ;  in  the 
Balkan  peninsula,  10 ;  agricultural, 
ancient  Greek  and  Italian,  11 ;  Teutonic 
tribes  in  Britain,  Scandinavia,  Spain, 
and  their  junctions,  331-5,  338-9  ;  com- 
pulsory junctions  effected  only  between 
somewhat  similar  tribes,  339-40 ;  tabu- 
lar views  of  bodies  politic  descended 
from  compulsory  junctions  of  tribes, 
440-1,  466. 

Tributary  cities  under  Athens,  96-8. 

Tyrannis,  45, 143,  147. 

Unions  of  peoples.  See  England, 
Sweden,  France. 

Unitary  nations  :  experimental  govern- 
ments for  a  unitary  nation,  444-50 ; 
continental  unitary  nations,  452 ; 
governments  of  unitary  nations,  456- 
64. 

United  States.    See  North  America. 

Venice  :  rise  of  the  Venetians,  355  ; 
early  history  of  the  Venetian  islanders, 
391-3 ;  their  adoption  of  Venice  as  their 
capital,  393  ;  their  doges  and  dependen- 
cies, 393-5 ;  their  Great  Council,  396-9 ; 
their  conquests  in  the  Eastern  Empire, 


INDEX 


559 


398-9 ;  closing  of  the  Great  Council, 
400-1;  conspiracy  of  BajamonteTiepolo, 
402;  the  Council  of  Ten,  402-3;  decline 
of  Venice,  403-4 ;  Venice  like  Sparta 
and  Rome  in  its  origin,  404-6  ;  in  some 
particulars  like  Rome  in  its  history, 
406-7. 

Vienna,  Congress  of,  452-3. 

Voluntary  junctions  of  equal  commun- 
ities, 468-516 ;  general  comments  on, 
513-15  ;  tabular  view  of,  516.     See  also 


Achaean  League,  Dutch  Netherlands, 
North  America,  Swiss  Cantons. 
Voluntary  junctions  of  unequal  bodies 
politic,  uuknown  except  in  modern 
history,  517-20 ;  some  junctions  of 
unequals  voluntary  only  in  seeming, 
520,  537  ;  general  comments  on  volun- 
tary junctions  of  unequals,  539-41 ; 
tabular  view  of,  542.  See  also  Scots, 
Irish,  Germany  (Modern),  Italy 
(Modern). 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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